Srinagar, June 12 -- Some floors never went dark at all. In half-lit offices, people shuffled papers in silence.

Inside the Examination Wing, two clerks argued over a typo on an old degree certificate. Across the hall, a group of junior staff took turns rechecking data on final-year pass percentages.

No one was waiting for an exam or the results of an entrance test. And yet, everything felt like a deadline.

"It wasn't just late hours," said one faculty coordinator. "It was weeks of staring into spreadsheets until your eyes hurt."

What began as a routine academic exercise soon turned into a full-blown reckoning.

With a revised grading framework, India's National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) was sending inspection teams ...