Day one of DU admissions gets off to rocky start due to glitches
New Delhi: Efforts by Delhi University to make the online admission process hassle-free seemed futile on Tuesday, the first day, as the website crashed. Several students, who managed to clear the cut-off, said they were unable to take admission as they could not generate their digital admission slips.
However, an official at the varsity maintained that the website crashed because of an unexpected rush. "Even those who did not meet the cut-off logged on to the website," he said, adding that the servers were restored by 4 pm.
The varsity's official website www.du.ac.in experienced glitches throughout Tuesday, while some students did not have correct documents.
"There is nothing to panic about. We are looking into the matter. Hopefully, there won't be much traffic tomorrow," said MK Pandit, chairman of the admission advisory committee. He added that technical teams are working to restore servers and additional servers are being set up to handle traffic.
The University server broke down in the morning, leaving many students helpless.
Cyber cafes near Patel Chest Institute in North Campus saw long queues of students waiting to generate their admission slips. Students also said that some cyber cafe owners overcharged them for printouts.
Siddharth, an aspirant from Jammu, said, "I have got 95 per cent and cleared the cut-off for BA programme in Ramjas College. But I couldn't take admission today. The offline system was much better. I have been standing in queues outside cyber cafes since 8 am, but couldn't generate my admission slip. The university should have thought of people like us who come from far-off places to take admission here. Where will we stay now?"
Ajeet Singh from Aligarh faced a similar problem. "My train reached the city early morning and I came to the campus in the morning. My plan was to take admission and go back home tonight. But now, I will have to stay with relatives," said Singh.
Some students, such as Parveen from Uttar Pradesh's Azamgarh, were a little lucky. "It took me two hours to generate the admission slip. Now, I am finally here but my document verification is not yet done," he said, half-an-hour before the process was scheduled to end.
The website crash triggered panic, with many students rushing to colleges without their admission slips, hoping for some assistance.
"Several students came without the admission slip. For that, we made some arrangements, but we were not able to manage everyone and had to send them to nearby cyber cafes with our student volunteers," said an official at Shri Ram College of Commerce.
"Instead of downloading the admission slips, most students came with only the registration forms. Because of the heavy traffic, the site slowed down in the morning and picked up pace only at 10.30 am," said a help desk volunteer at Hindu College.
Glitches are not a new issue in DU. Last year, servers crashed repeatedly, both during the admission form fill-up process as well as after the cutoffs were released.
