State boards thumb down Nat'l Academic Depository

New Delhi: With school education boards of the states staying away from National Academic Depository (NAD), it seems the initiative taken by the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to put a check on frauds in marks and certificates may prove to be a non-starter.

However, in contrary to state boards, the higher education institutions have adopted National Academic Depository (NAD) initiative with top priority.

According to official sources, only four major states such as Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Chhattisgarh and Assam have joined the NAD platform as of now while the CBSE and northeastern states are relying on the services of their board's academic depository. The NDA-ruled Bihar has recently joined the national depository as the fifth state.

"In contrary to the tepid response of state boards, over 300 institutions have so far been enrolled with the NAD and most of the institutions are Central varsities, IITs, IIMs, NITs. Apart from these, some state universities and private varsities have also started taking the services of NAD," the official sources said.

"Its secondary education boards of states that are showing least interest in joining the NAD platform. As of now, out of 55 education boards, only 11 have joined the NAD and of which seven boards are from the small states like Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya and Goa," the official said.

Hoping that more education boards would get registered with the depository platform, the official stressed that unless all boards don't become a part of NAD, it wouldn't be possible to put a complete check on counterfeiting of marksheets, certificates, etc.

Notably, the national academic depository was approved by the Union Cabinet in October 2016 and became operational last year. The CDSL and NDSL have been entrusted with the responsibility of providing depository services.