No individual names figure in the report which, observers feel, is as vague as the terms of reference given to the committee which wrote it.

The report was accepted on Monday by the Board of Examinations which had instituted the enquiry. Today, it will be placed before the Management Council. Subsequently, another committee is to be formed to give effect to this committee's recommendations.

Defending the non-specific nature of his committee's report, De said, ``A domestic enquiry has several constraints. There is a kind of helplessness. We could not exercise the kind of powers which other investigating agencies can.''

What he meant was that this enquiry committee could not use police-like methods to interrogate people.

According to De, the entire examination system was found to be in a state of utterchaos. There was no responsibility and no accountability for anything. He informed reporters that during the past five years, the Registrar had not called even one meeting of the officials to improve coordination.

``Nobody seems to know how many marklists and degrees are printed, how many are received by the University, how many are kept where, who's responsible for keeping track of their issue, or even who's in charge of the almirahs where they're kept,'' he said.

Things were so bad, he said, that even the boy from the canteen could have walked away with a few blank marklists or degrees along with the empty teacups.

The committee recorded the depositions of 15 or 20 officials, De said. He recalled that one of them had complained that his repeated requests for an almirah had been ignored.

De could not provide any convincing answers as to why officials at different levels failed to act, even after some serious cases of irregularities had come to the fore. He kept reiterating that the ``entire systemwas in a state of collapse''.

Surely, if this was the extent of irresponsibility and carelessness involved, the departmental heads should have taken some notice of it. De responded to this by saying, ``But they can't act on their own. They are answerable to their higher-ups, aren't they?''

He said that the committee cannot rule out the involvement of ``outside agencies'' in the racket, but the report, again, has no specific finding in this regard.