All illegal offline admissions made by junior college managements for the first year of the academic year 2021-22 will be cancelled, warned Andhra Pradesh's Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) on Monday. "It is noticed that certain college managements and principals are admitting first year students through offline mode... all the admissions will not be approved by the BIE," said the BIE Secretary V Ramakrishna to the media. This academic year, the board introduced only online admissions to wipe out decades of widespread abuse and indiscriminate commercialisation of intermediate education in the southern state. However, violating this rule, some junior colleges have admitted students in offline mode and started teaching classes. This is without the BIE even issuing a notification to allow admissions.

"It is to inform you that the BIE, AP has not issued any notification for admission and all the admissions will not be approved," the secretary said. Ramakrishna, a senior Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, who is sanitising intermediate education, said the board is yet to roll out the admission process in online mode. "BIE, AP will roll out such admission in online mode for the academic year 2021-22. Hence, students and parents are informed that admission shall be made only for online mode after issuing of notification by the BIE," he noted.

Admission for first-year students will be strictly online without the need for filling any forms manually. Ease of seeking admission in a college of student's choice, choice of colleges, abolishing the illegal custody of certificates with college managements, and data integrity are the goals of online admissions. The BIE has also removed the need for intermediate colleges to physically verify a student's Class 10 certificate and other documents, a much-abused procedure to gain complete domination over students.

"In the name of verifying certificates, such as Class 10, caste certificate and others, they (college managements) are holding those certificates and not returning them illegally if they (students) don't pay tuition fees and other reasons," Ramakrishna said.

With this move, the Andhra Pradesh government aims to clip the wings of many corporate junior colleges which have a notorious record of harassing students by keeping their certificates with them. The online procedure enables a student to join a college without the need for a student to produce any physical certificates or even e-certificate to college management.

Similarly, online admission is also aimed at attaining data integrity as the system will directly tap the Secondary School Certificate (Class 10) website to feed a student's name, father's name and many other data points without spelling mistakes and errors.

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