Mumbai University Suspends Admissions in 229 Colleges Over Accreditation and Exam Paper Error

The list of such institutions has been put on the MU website, which had warned students and parents to closely cross-check the list prior to seeking admissions. The first-year admission process for 229 of its affiliated colleges for the year 2025-26 was suspended by the Mumbai University (MU) on Wednesday.

These colleges did not apply for or renew NAAC/NBA accreditation or form College Development Committees (CDC).

The decision was taken a day after MU released the schedule of undergraduate (UG) degree admissions for the coming academic year.

Names of such colleges have been put up on MU's website, which requests students and parents to go through the list carefully before applying for admissions.

Of these 229 colleges, 156 colleges lack any grades of National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) or National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and 76 colleges that lacked establishing CDCs.

"The decision to initiate the process will be a signal that will implement rules strictly. Accreditation is required to provide quality standards to higher education institutions in Maharashtra," the university in a statement.

"Despite a number of opportunities and a number of extensions of deadlines, most of the colleges were defaulting on compliance requirements, and there was no option but to initiate action in the interest of students," a senior university administrator said.

During a Management Council meeting last month, Mumbai University had decided to take firm action against colleges that default on compliance requirements. The University had stated that colleges which shunned NAAC accreditation would be penalized with a fine of Rs 10,000.  Apart from this, another motion was also approved stating the MU's College Affiliation and Development Department shall submit a review and report by April 20 and defaulters can be excluded from admissions in the next year's academic year.

The repeaters who appeared for the LLB exam in the subject Law of Crime Wednesday were given a test paper containing questions of the new syllabus in the BNS format at certain exam centers. Regular students were to get the question paper in the shape of BNS, and repeaters were to submit a question paper in the shape of Indian Penal Code, which was included in the previous syllabus.

As the error was noticed within a few minutes, the question paper was replaced by the university, which was protested by students and caused more than 30 minutes' delay. At some centers, however, incorrect question papers were given to regular as well as normal students.

Even though the MU has mentioned that wrong set of question paper was distributed for the paper on Law of Crime in some of the centers, it has been quite on disclosing how many students were affected as a result of the error and what precisely is going to be done so that none of the marks are lost by those students.