By IANS,
New Delhi : In a new e-governance initiative, the human resource development ministry Thursday announced that e-certificates will be sent to all those who qualify for the University Grants Commission National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) test for appointment as university lecturers.
Close to 15,000 aspirants will now get their UGC-NET qualification certificate through e-mails, instead of the earlier practice of receiving hard copies of the certificate. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal launched the e-certificates Thursday.
“This is yet another step towards e-governance we are trying to build,” Sibal said after launching the programme.
“Every 20 seconds, a certificate will be mailed to the eligible candidates,” UGC’s acting chairman Ved Prakash said.
The certificate will be given to 10,433 candidates who qualified for NET and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) in the exam in June 2010.
The UGC-NET exam is conducted twice every year in June and December in 77 subjects at 74 centres spread across the country.
“Approximately five lakh students take the UGC NET exam every year, and 15,000 qualify in every batch. With this e-certificate, the time taken in giving the certificates, which was earlier six months, will now be only six days. At the same time the time taken for verification of authenticity of the certificate by employer will take only 24 hours against the earlier time of four months,” he said.
The certificates will also be password protected, will carry a photo of the candidate and have a unique bar code.
“An sms will also be delivered to the candidate as soon as the certificate is delivered in their mail box,” Prakash added.