According to the NAAC, “3075 assessors, or nearly 67% of the database, have accepted the peer team visit invitations” out of the total pool of 4,686 active assessors.

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) said on Tuesday that the entire accreditation and assessment process it conducts through teams of experts is “transparent” and “cannot be compromised,” two days after Bhushan Patwardhan resigned as chairman, alleging that the Council was giving “questionable grades” to higher education institutions.

NAAC director S. C. Sharma claimed that the processes inside the Council are “continuously being upgraded” in an attempt to refute the concerns expressed by the committee Patwardhan hired to investigate the operation of NAAC.

The committee’s report on its conclusions, which was led by J. P. Singh Joreel, director of the Information and Library Network, a UGC centre, was released on Monday.

According to the NAAC, “3075 assessors, or nearly 67% of the database, have accepted the peer team visit invitations” out of the total pool of 4,686 active assessors. The Joreel committee reported that while some specialists from the pool of over 4,000 assessors had visited the sites many times, close to 70% have not had the opportunity.

The Council stated that “super-admins comprising advisor ICT and system analyst have been created only to manage and supervise the overall operations of the system” in response to the finding that the NAAC’s IT system was “compromised,” with people without authority also being able to allocate assessors.

“In accordance with NAAC’s mandate, the entire certification and evaluation process is reliable, transparent, ICT-driven, and automated. Because the entire process is transparent, decentralised, and accessible to the stakeholders through a user-friendly interface, the system cannot be compromised, it was noted.