A year after decision, bilingual marks cards a non-starter

It’s one year now after the decision to provide bilingual (Kannada and English) marks cards for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. But most of the universities have not yet implemented it.

The decision to print marks cards in both languages was based on the recommendation by the Kannada Development Authority (KDA) to implement Kannada in administration and academics at the higher education level.

According to the higher education department, the decision has not been implemented in any of the universities.

In June 2019, the Karnataka State Council for Higher Education had taken the decision, following the recommendation submitted by the KDA, but even a year after the resolution passed in the Council meeting, none of the universities is keen on implementing it.

“Printing bilingual marks cards is not a problem, but the size of the marks card will become bigger,” is what the university authorities are saying.

“We cannot print two marks cards, but we can make the existing marks cards bilingual. The problem is, the font size will be small if we print in both Kannada and English,” said the registrar evaluation of one of the state-run universities.

Another official from a university-based in Bengaluru said, “Printing marks cards in two languages will double the work as the number of subjects will also become double.” Vice Chancellor of Bangalore University Prof K R Venugopal said, “We will implement it from next academic year.”

The government had given exemption from this for Sanskrit University as they are already printing marks cards in Sanskrit. The decision to print bilingual marks cards applies even to private and deemed to be universities. Every year, each university in the state prints three lakh to to four lakh marks cards.