Delhi University goes paperless on 'surface and administration' level

NEW DELHI: The Delhi University (DU) has gone almost paperless with the majority of its operations, including those relating to administrative and accounts departments, now linked to the university’s ‘E-Samarth’ portal, a senior varsity official said on Monday.

The official said that the university has been successful in making most of the processes, like admission and examination, online. "We have linked administrative and accounting work to Samarth in the last few months. We are in the process to link everything to Samarth. We are successful in making most of our processes online," said Professor Sanjeev Singh, Joint Dean, Admission, who also heads the university's paperless initiative. He said that the university is paperless except for certain operations, where it is difficult to completely switch from paper to online, he said. "On the surface and administrative level, we are paperless. But in nuances we cannot say it is completely paperless because several processes like examination and mark sheet require paper printing," Singh said. “Though its digital version is available, there is a requirement for a print version. Attestation of the documents and all other notifications have to be printed," he added.

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Even though the process to shift all university's operations online started around 2016, the initiative picked up pace only in the last six months, during which most major operations were linked to E-Samarth. The university is working to make printing "redundant", and officials feel that all stakeholders' participation is needed to achieve that. Dean of Colleges, Balaram Pani, said that digitising will help streamline the functioning of the university and will reduce paper dependency. "We are making most of the administrative work and accounting work digital. We are creating a digital library. We are creating a digital data bank. We will link all these with Samarth. It takes time to digitalise years of data. We are in the process," Pani said.

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