Sagar: It was a single line in an exam answer sheet that blew the lid off one of the most brazen cheating scandals to emerge from a central university
in recent years. When an evaluator at Dr Harisingh Gour Central University in Madhya Pradesh's Sagar came across the sentence "Click the link to watch the full video answer" written on a student's answer sheet, it set off an investigation that would eventually lead to the withholding of an entire college's results. The evaluator immediately reported the anomaly to the Controller of Examinations. On his instructions, other answer sheets from the same college were examined, and what emerged was a pattern of alleged mass cheating: dozens of students from Satpura College of Information and Biotechnology in Sausar, Chhindwara, had allegedly copied ChatGPT-generated responses directly onto their answer sheets using their mobile phones during the examination.
Not One Subject, Not One Student; Results Withheld, Action Imminent
The investigation revealed the alleged cheating was not confined to a single subject. Similar instances were found across three different subjects, with many students submitting nearly identical answers, a telltale sign of AI-generated content being reproduced verbatim. The university administration responded by withholding the examination results of all students from Satpura College, even as results for Dr Harisingh Gour Central University and all other affiliated colleges had already been declared.The examinations in question were conducted in May for the second, fourth and sixth semesters under the university's centralized evaluation system, introduced from the previous semester, under which answer sheets from all 17 affiliated colleges are sent to Sagar for assessment.
University Public Relations Officer Vivek Jaiswal said notices would first be issued to the college management. Based on the outcome of the inquiry, further action including conducting re-examinations or changing the examination centre may be taken.
