The Delhi High Court was informed on Monday by Delhi University about the making of a new committee for proposing a charge for issuing Digital Degree certificates to the students. The University plans on charging Rs. 750/- from those students whose printed degrees have not been issued yet and Rs. 1000/- from such students for whom the printed degrees have been issued.
During the hearing, one of the reasons which were stated by the counsel for Delhi University stated that a number of people are employed to print and process these degrees. Adv Mohinder Rupal, counsel for the University also stated that another one of the reasons for charging the students for digital degrees is that the timeline is too short and the university is adopting such measures so that there won’t be any need for extra charging.
J Pratiba M. Singh, however, said that it is unfair to charge students for digital degrees and that such degrees should be free of cost.
“The costs of paper are not considered when degree certificates were then distributed, and you want to charge students for Digital Degrees!” as remarked by the court.
The court was made aware of the fact that the charges for the degrees (migration certificate and degree certificate) are already accounted for in the annual fee which is paid by the students to the university, as pointed out by Adv Sarthak Maggon, the counsel appearing on behalf of the students seeking for the University to declare their results.
The counsel also pointed out that the charging of an additional fee for the digital degree is burdening the students and hence, the university should not be allowed to charge any additional fees for the same purpose and provide the students with a digital copy of their degrees as usual norms go.
The counsel also mentioned the inappropriateness of charging students for a digital degree as compared to a physically printed degree, since the nature of production and procurement of such degrees is cost-effective once the technical infrastructure has been appropriately set up.
The University, however, has justified all the charges that it plans on imposing for its digital degree.
“In so far as Digilocker is concerned there has to be a proper timeline, immediately upon declaration of results, a digital degree is being generated within a period of one month they should transmit the entire data to Digilocker.” said the court.
The court has directed the University and asked it to make a proper timeline for uploading the data and has directed the university to generate a digital degree within one month and transmit the data to Digilocker.
The next hearing for the same is scheduled for December 23’ 2020.
Libertatem.in is now on Telegram. Follow us for regular legal updates and judgement from the court. Follow us on Google News, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter. You can also contribute blog, articles, story tip, judgment and many more and help us spread awareness for a better society. Submit Your Post Now.
