The court emphasized the importance of issuing digital degree certificates without physical submission and highlighted the equivalence of certificates generated from the Digilocker system to the original degree documents under Rule 9A of the IT Rules 2016.

JUDGMENT

Prathiba M. Singh, J. - This hearing has been done by video conferencing.

2. Directions were passed with respect to the process of issuance of online degree certificates by University of Delhi (hereinafter, ''DU'') by this Court vide order dated 7th August, 2020. On the said date, the Court was informed by Professor Vinay Gupta, Dean (Examinations) and Dr. Sanjeev Singh, Director, DUCC that all the data of students up till November, 2019 is available with the DU. The Court was also informed that an online portal has already been set up for issuance of digital degree certificates being www.digicerti.du.ac.in. In addition, data was to be transmitted to Digilocker. Considering the various submissions that were made on that date, the Court had directed as under:

"12. In the meantime, all such students who require their digital degree certificates due to any urgent deadlines etc., are free to register on the portal and the officials at DU shall ensure that their digital degree certificates are issued within a period of one week from registration. In case the portal is not working for any reasons, the details may be submitted on the e-mail addresses of Dr. Sanjeev Singh and Prof. Vinay Gupta, as mentioned below, and steps shall then be taken within the time prescribed."

3. In addition, DU was also to look into the question whether marksheets and transcripts of the students can be issued digitally. It is submitted that the ld. Division Bench has also directed the DU to consider issuance of transcripts and marksheets digitally in W.P (C) 3199/2020 titled Prateek Sharma & Anr. v. Union of India & Anr. vide order dated 1 st September, 2020.

4. W.P.(C) 3945/2020 was then listed on 2nd September, 2020 on an impleadment application filed by a student of DU, who graduated in 2017 from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC). It was his case that he had applied to obtain his digital degree certificate on 14th August, 2020 but was not issued the same till date, even though as per the order dated 7th August 2020, the DU was to issue the certificates within 1 week from the receipt of application. It was also submitted that, the DU sent a response to the request with a disclaimer, that it wanted the students to file hard copies of the documents submitted online, physically as well.

5. Further, Mr. Maggon, ld. counsel for Petitioners submits that he has received a large number of calls from students, who need their degree certificates on an urgent basis and have not been issued the same, despite applications being filed on the online portal. This Court had taken note of all the submissions and had directed affidavit to be filed by the DU vide order dated 2nd September, 2020.

6. Today, the Court is being informed that Professor Vinay Gupta is unwell and he has not been attending office for the last 2 weeks. Three officials from the DU have joined the hearing today, namely Mr. Onkar, Assistant Registrar (Examination Branch), Dr. Sanjeev Singh, Director, DUCC and Professor D. S. Rawat, Dean (Examinations). After interacting with them during the course of hearing, the following facts have emerged:

1) After order dated 7th August 2020, insofar as the online portal of DU is concerned, more than 30,000 students have applied to obtain digital degree certificates and none of them have been issued the certificates.

2) The data of 28,000 students, which constitutes approximately half of the students who have graduated in 2017, has been uploaded on Digilocker. However, in order for the same to be accessed by students, the date of birth of the students is to be added to the Digilocker data.

3) The date of birth of all the students is to be obtained by the DU from all its colleges and transferred to Digilocker.

4) Insofar as the students who graduated in 2018 and 2019 are concerned, no data is available with the Examination Branch of the DU. Professor Rawat states that the said data has now been requested from the various colleges and faculties. He states