mumbai over halfadecade ago the government promised students a virtual college feeder service for the price of a burger from enrolment to details about fees exam timetable to hall tickets the maharashtra knowledge corporation limited was to become the be all and end all for students each year close to 12 lakh arts science and commerce students have shelled out rs 50 for these promises and have either received nothing or a raw deal four batches of students hence the mkcl and university of mumbai tried to offer one basic facility of issuing hall tickets online to commerce candidates the result was a disaster scores did not have their hall tickets even a day before the exam and a few hours before the first paper exam centres for several students had to be changed because of a technical glitch the mkcl with the minister of higher and technical education at its helm claimed that colleges were not using its framework not uploading data correctly and in time college principals however alleged that the mkcls servers kept crashing and information had to be uploaded repeatedly college heads have wondered how and why the mkcl has managed to bag the job of every conventional state university without the state calling for tenders hemang tanna president of the managing trust of balbharati college who filed an rti plea for details on profit distribution was stonewalled the reply stated that mkcl was a private firm and did not fall under the purview of rti its shareholding pattern suggests otherwise 3713 shares are owned by the states department of higher and technical education and another 3391 by state universities there is no clarity on who holds the remaining shares see box when asked who were the others holding 2799 share mkcls managing director vivek sawant said hundreds of people it is this ambiguity which has raised questions mkcl is offering only administrative services and is not of any academic help to students it has been arbitrarily monopolizing all administrative activities offered by universities and state government said tanna a suburban college principal said mkcls services are terrible when we needed technical support they took about two weeks to respond to our queries and yet we are forced to go with mkcl speaking about the difficulties they faced this year another college principal said this was the first year when colleges were supposed to fill examination forms online through mkcls software however when we were filing our options for exam centres we found wed been given only two options we were forced to choose between them we finally got the hall tickets at the very last minute only to discover that mkcl had allotted a totally different centre to us in the end the students worst fears came true as they frantically ran around for hall tickets distance education candidates who had enrolled through mkcl by paying rs 125 had to live a nightmare as they were reallotted new centres the night before the exam sawant