AICTE asks technical institutions to upload their academic awards on Digilocker

In a bid to digitise academic records, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), has asked all technical institutions approved by it to upload academic awards of their institution on Digilocker, under the National Academic Depository (NAD). The initiative is aimed at preventing educational institutions fromwithholding certificates and academic record to forcefully retainstudents and faculty. The council, through a circular on Monday, has also asked institutesto designate nodal officers who would be incharge of uploading thedocuments and set up dedicated NAD cells.

The details of these cells should also be made available on their websites. Students too, have been asked to register themselves on the NAD website. The NAD can be used by teachers, students and alumni of educational institutions to access their academic awards online and produce it for verification while applying for educational programmes, employment andother opportunities. Academic institutions including various central universities, stateuniversities, private universities, higher educational institutions,school boards, etc. are uploading their academic awards on NAD.

Earlier, NAD was being implemented through NSOL Database ManagementLimited (NDML) and CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL). It was discontinued bythe Ministry of Human Resource Development (now Ministry of Education)in March this year. Digilocker is the single depository for NAD and the previousdepositories NDML and CvL are not part of NAD now. "For seamless transfer of data from NDML and CVL to NAD-Digilocker, UGC has alreadywritten letters to both depositories to transfer the data and toDigilocker to take charge as the sole depository of NAD," the AICTEs aid in its circular adding that NAD will be a permanent free scheme. In 2016, the Government of India had authorised the University GrantCommission (UGC) for implementation of NAD.