National Academic Depository
The Union Government has come up with a facility whereby students can store their degrees in a website managed by the Ministry for Human Resources. These can be retrieved any time and from anywhere when needed or employers can be referred to see and verify them by using the unique number or code assigned to the recipients. The facility has been developed by the National Academic Depository (NAD).
It is often the case that students or job aspirants face the risk of loss, theft or spoilage of their degree, diploma, certificates or awards while transporting them in the physical form. Even the ones stored at homes or institutions may get destroyed due to termites or humidity or salinity of the air. Besides there is always the risk of their fake replicas or forged ones could be used by others. The NAD will do away all these.
The Depository has been developed by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in pursuance of a decision by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2016. The facility is likely to benefit nearly five crore students every year. India has 55 boards for evaluation of school education at the 10th standard (SSLC) level, 359 State Universities, 123 deemed universities, 47 Central Universities and 260 private Universities. Besides, there are 107 institutions of excellence such as BITS, Pilani, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore; MIDS, Chennai; NITs, IISERs, NISERs, IITs, and some centrally-funded institutions. The various school exam boards themselves issue nearly 3.65 crore certificates.
The NAD is a digital storehouse which besides preserving the documents will ensure that process of retrieval is easy, transparent and flawless. Besides, the mechanism will be totally transparent. The paperless depository was conceived on the lines of dematerialization of financial securities. The UGC will be directing all boards, universities and other educational institutions to upload the certificates, diplomas, and degrees onto the website. Each student will be provided a unique number to access the documents which will be based on Aadhaar numbers. He or she can authorize the employers to access the documents for verification process. The facility will save immense amount of resources being spent on photocopying and sending of these documents by posts, couriers or after by email after due scanning. The freshers from colleges and universities can upload their documents free of cost till be age of 27. The NAD will maintain the integrity and confidentiality of the documents.
The creation of the NAD is a huge advance towards easing the pain of the students seeking admissions, applying for jobs or seeking visa for immigration or jobs abroad. For more details log onto: www.nad.gov.in
(Contributed by Maqbool Ahmed Siraj)
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