Bhubaneswar, Jan. 31: Students of colleges affiliated to the Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) will finally receive their original certificates.

The issuing of certificates was stopped since 2010 as the varsity had decided to improve the quality of certificates after several cases of forgery surfaced. As a result, the students had to make do with the “provisional certificates”.

“All the certificates pending for the last two years will be distributed within a month,” said BPUT registrar, P.K. Sathpathy.

He said the number of pending certificates would be around 20,000.

The certificates shall be sent to the respective colleges from where students can collect them. During the past two years, the authorities have been receiving a number of queries from potential recruiters asking if a particular applicant was a student of the varsity.

“On all such occasions we have written special letters to them, mentioning that they are bonafide students of the BPUT. However, once the original certificates are distributed, there would be no such problem in the future,” he added.

Also, with the 14-tier security system in place, faking of marksheets would become difficult. The new certificates would have many new features including a special penetrating ring and a hologram that would be visible under ultraviolet rays. They would also have the BPUT watermark and a borderline, he said.

However, the incidents of forged marksheets are still being recorded.

“Technological advancement has made manipulation of certificates very easy. Recently, we received a BPUT certificate where a student was awarded a degree in arts though the university does not offer any course in arts stream. Everything, including the paper and the logo, was copied to perfection,” said director of examinations of BPUT R.R. Das.