Education Secretary Nazrul Islam Khan allegedly defied Minister Nurul Islam Nahid and forced all colleges to use the automated students selection system, causing a crisis.
A bdnews24.com investigation into the cause behind the three-day delay in publication of college admission results found that he disregarded a written instruction by the minister which was to include only colleges with seats above 300 into the system.
In Nahid’s absence, Khan issued the admission guidelines violating the instruction to bring all colleges under the e-system that crashed as its design was unable to cope with the large number of applicants.
Ministry officials told bdnews24.com that if the minister’s directives were followed the number of applicants would not have been so large and the system would not have crashed.
The education secretary did not comment on the allegations.
Khan had said before that he was responsible for all the complications that resulted in the system failure.
Although the college admissions results were to be published on June 25, the technical glitch has made its fate unsure.
BUET’s IICT was tasked to process all the applications and publish the results.
The inter-board coordination subcommittee could not publish the results even through the day on Sunday.
A meeting was held at the Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information & Statistics (BANBEIS) on May 16 to formulate the admission guidelines headed by the education secretary.
Ministry and education board officials said the findings were submitted for final approval to the education minister in a note on May 25.
Nahid said the plan would have to be phased considering those educational institutions that are weak, lagging and did not get students.
“Educational institutions with 500 seats were included in the platform (online and sms admission system) last year. This year we can implement it for institutions with minimum 300 seats.”
Ministry officials revised the proposal accordingly and presented it to the secretary for approval on May 31.
It was published on June 1 with his approval.
It said that applicants for institutions with at least 300 seats can apply online or through Teletalk sms platform. However, institutions with fewer than 300 seats can opt to be included in the platform.
A senior official at the ministry, on condition of anonymity, toldbdnews24.com Khan on June 2 reissued the admission guidelines which removed the 300-seat clause.
It said applications for all educational institutions approved by the board can be filed online or through sms and highlighted the website for online applications.
As a result, all students had to apply online or through sms and coordinating applications from 1.2 million admission-seekers became the issue.
Source: bdnews24