# Kerala polytechnic exams held via email after portal crash 2026-10-28T12:47:45+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet Higher Education Minister Roji M. John told the Kerala Assembly on Wednesday, 28 October that an alternative system of distributing question papers through email prevented disruption of diploma examinations at polytechnic colleges after the official portal crashed. The portal of the State Board of Technical Education (SBTE) failed on 14 October during the November 2026 diploma exams. Institutions normally download papers from the portal one hour before exams. When the glitch could not be fixed in time by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), papers were emailed securely to all institutions half an hour before exams began, the Minister said. Mr. John said the same email-based backup was used during portal failures in 2019, 2022 and April 2026. He added that the Technical Education Department has received no complaints from students or heads of institutions. Instructions have been issued to ensure similar technical glitches are resolved in time going forward. ## Indian Opinion Analysis The portal failure forced the SBTE to switch to a backup system that has existed since at least 2019 but was never made the primary channel, leaving each examination cycle vulnerable to the same glitch. Students and staff at polytechnic colleges across the State are affected when the portal goes down, because question-paper delivery then depends on email delivery and college-level printing capacity, which is not uniform. The NIC has been asked to fix the problem but has not yet done so. The outcome rests on whether the instructions issued on Monday, 28 October produce a permanent fix before the next exam window. ## Coverage - thehindu.com led with government's alternative system and minister's denial of complaints This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: Kerala Assembly, NIC, Roji M John, SBTE Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/kerala-polytechnic-exams-held-via-email-after-portal-crash/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/kerala-polytechnic-exams-held-via-email-after-portal-crash/#story-in-brief How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/