‘Hacking’ charge puts teacher groups on a collision course in Keralam’s MG University

A battle over who controls an online system for uploading undergraduate internal marks has opened a fresh front at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, with rival teacher organisations trading allegations of tampering and attempts to disrupt the examination process.

Just two months after the pro-United Democratic Front (UDF) Syndicate took charge, the Congress-backed Kerala Private College Teachers’ Association (KPCTA) has alleged that the university’s internal-mark uploading portal was hacked. The association has accused the Left-affiliated All Kerala Private College Teachers’ Association (AKPCTA) of unauthorisedly taking control of the system.

The AKPCTA has rejected the charge, saying the university portal is functioning normally and questioning the very basis of the hacking allegation.

Web application

The controversy centres on the MGU-FYUGP, the university’s four-year undergraduate Honours programme. Under the system, students’ Continuous Comprehensive Assessment (CCA) marks are uploaded each semester through a web application called the MGU-CCA Generator.

The application was created on October 14, 2024, and its link was officially circulated by the nodal officer of the university’s Centralised Admission Portal to FYUGP coordinators in all 280 affiliated colleges through their official communication groups.

The KPCTA says that the system was used to upload internal marks for the first four semesters of students admitted in 2024, who are now in their third year, besides the first two semesters of second-year students.

The allegations

The trouble, according to the association, began towards the end of last month when teachers tried to upload marks for the fifth semester. The portal had become non-functional, only for AKPCTA members to subsequently circulate links to the same form through their own communication groups.

“Only the user ID and password had been changed. The user ID was changed to ‘AKPCTA’ and the password to ‘MGU@2026’. Thus, a portal that was originally created and officially circulated by the university was converted into a tool controlled by the organisation,” said Ronny George, KPCTA zonal president.

The KPCTA has termed the alleged changes unauthorised access to an official university system and claimed they amounted to a cybercrime. The association has also raised concerns that any disruption to the system could have a bearing on the examination schedule.

AKPCTA’s response

The AKPCTA, meanwhile, has offered a different account. Its Mahatma Gandhi University Regional Committee, it said, had developed and circulated a ‘Teacher’s Aid’ app to help teachers maintain CCA records at the college level. The app, the organisation maintained, was an independent tool and had no connection with the university’s official mark-entry system.

The explanation has failed to satisfy the KPCTA, which questioned why a link created for an association’s own use was circulated among colleges for recording internal marks. It has also flagged the possibility of students’ academic data being compromised and examination-related confidentiality norms being breached.

The KPCTA has submitted complaints to the Chancellor, Chief Minister and Higher Education Minister. It has also warned criminal proceedings against office-bearers of the AKPCTA.