Snag in fee payment portal causes headache to aspirants

New Delhi: Students grappling with fee-payment problems for admission at Delhi University had a tough time on Thursday as they raced against time to grab the seats under the first cutoff as admissions were to close at 1.30 pm for the morning classes and 7 pm for the evening classes.

Students who had already paid fees through the online portal and still had not received a confirmation had to go through a lot of hassle.

At the Grievances Redressal Committee in Arts Faculty, the members of the committee were busy catering to the queries and problems of the students all day along.

"The fee-payment was done by me well before time but I still have not received any validation of the admission and I am afraid that it would be cancelled now," said Daksh Gupta, who was eyeing a seat in prestigious Shri Ram College of Commerce.

This time around, the technical snags and crashing servers have posed quite a problem for the DU authorities.

"I visited the online portal to make the payment but it showed a message which read 'Registration Completed' even without paying the fee," another applicant named Shruti Goyal from Gurugram said.

Later in the day, DU authorities called the bank officials to corroborate the claims of students who had said to have paid the fee already.

Apart from the online payment gateway fiasco, students had several other problems like filling wrong course options and not choosing the correct subject for a particular course.

Apoorva from Madhya Pradesh, who wished to study Economic (Hons) but did not have Maths in her Class XII, was left stranded due to her lack of familiarity with the convoluted admission process.

"We had gone to the cyber cafe to fill the admission form, but now my son is not able to log into the portal, as he does not remember the password," said the father of Mayank Ojha, who is a blind student and is looking to pursue BA Hindi (Hons).

Meanwhile, Sakunta Dutta, a Grievance Redressal Committee member, dismissed the claims about the authorities being inefficient in their work.

'"Most students coming to us have either committed mistakes on their application form or have not gone through the admission bulletin properly," he said, while also stating that around 200-250 grievances were being heard daily and acted upon.