By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, AUG 01, 2017: WHILE answering a question in the Lok Sabha yesterday, the HRD MoS, Dr Mahendra Nath Pandey, said that the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is the recognized accreditation agency in the Country for all Higher Educational (Non-technical) Institutions. As per procedure for accreditation, the Institutions/Universities submit the data and information in the prescribed format to NAAC. The data are validated by a peer team constituted by NAAC before submission of its report to NAAC for accreditation of the Institutions. At times, NAAC, thorough its visiting team and complaints / RTIs from the stakeholders, has noticed that various Institutions have submitted fraudulent data for acquiring higher grade. These complaints are considered by visiting team of NAAC before assigning the final scores under the respective components of assessment.
 
To avoid submission of fraudulent data by the Institutions for accreditation, NAAC has taken following steps:

++  It is mandatory for the Institutions to upload the information provided to NAAC on their website and retain the information on their website until completion of the validity period of accreditation and provide access to all the stakeholders.

++  Institutions are instructed to videograph the whole assessment exercise and submit the same to NAAC and also upload on its website.

++ A Complainants Management Committee has been established which looks into the complaints especially those received after accreditation for initiating necessary action.

++ The new procedure of Assessment and Accreditation (A&A) implemented by NAAC w.e.f. July 2017, has introduced an additional step, wherein the data submitted by Institution are subjected to a Data Verification and Validation (DVV) process. The new process has also provision for imposing severe penalties on Institutions submitting fraudulent data.
           
There is no such proposal under consideration of the Government to set up a Regulatory Commission for monitoring the performance of Private Universities. All existing private universities are established by the Act of their respective State Legislatures.  These universities are governed and regulated by their respective State Acts and University Grants Commission (UGC) (Establishment of and Maintenance of Standards in Private Universities) Regulations, 2003. As far as Private Deemed to be Universities are concerned, they are regulated by UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2016. As per the Regulations, UGC conducts periodic inspection of these Universities and deficiencies, if any, observed during inspection are communicated to respective University for rectification. In addition, various Professional Regulatory Councils viz. Bar Council of India (BCI), Dental Council of India (DCI), Indian Nursing Council (INC), Medical Council of India (MCI), National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), Pharmacy Council of India (PCI), etc. also review these Universities in their respective areas. Further, ranking of Higher Educational Institutions done by the Government under National Institutional Ranking Framework acts as performance indicator.