Delhi University (DU) informed the High Court of Delhi on Monday that it had set up a committee to propose fees for issuing a digital degree certificate on the recommendation of which INR 750 were charged to students for whom the printed degree was not awarded and INR 1,000 to students for whom the printed degree was issued.
DU, represented by Mohinder Rupal, told Justice Pratibha Singh that the reason for charging students with digital degrees is that several people have to be employed to process these degrees. He also said that since the timeline is too short, these measures are being taken by the varsity, there will be no need to charge more.
The court said, however, that students should not be charged for digital degrees and should be free of charge.
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"There's a problem here. I think the graduation certificates should be given free of charge. Paper costs more, you're not charging, but you're charging for creating an electronic degree! "The bench said that.
It asked the University of Delhi whether the issue of digital degree certificates would be carried out on a regular basis on an annual basis or only for that academic year after students raised a number of complaints about the imposition of an exorbitant fee proposed to be charged for the provision of digital degrees.
The court heard a plea from a few students who had moved to the court to seek direction from the University to declare their results and to issue the degrees.
Appearing for the students, their lawyer, Sarthak Maggon, told the court that the University, in its consolidated annual fees charged to the students, already accounts for the provision of degree certificates/migration certificates and therefore should not be allowed to charge the students for providing a digital copy of the certificate.
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He said that such a charge would place additional burdens on students and would be exorbitant given that the production of digital degrees after the appropriate format has been put in place must not be charged at the same level as physical printed degrees, since the nature of the production and procurement of such degrees is cost effective once the technical infrastructure has been properly set up.
The variation in its affidavit justified the digital degree charges by stating that it had adopted the General Financial Regulations, 2017, concerning transactions involving financial implications that make user charges a key component of non-tax revenues.
During the hearing, the judge also sought to know whether the transmission of data for uploading to Digilocker with respect to all students in all courses of DU will be followed in a feature and if so, in what timelines.
The court argued that there must be a proper timeline for uploading the data while adding that, immediately upon declaration of results, a digital degree is generated within a period of one month and that the data should be transmitted to the Digilocker. The matter will now be heard on 23 December.
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