Privacy notice
Draft: to be approved by the Trust
Who we are
The MERI Alumni Trust (“the Trust”, “we”) runs this site and the alumni scholarship for marine engineering cadets of the IMU Kolkata and Mumbai campuses (formerly DMET and MERI). For the personal data on this site, the Trust is the data fiduciary under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (the DPDP Act).
Contact for anything in this notice: dmetalumnischolarship@gmail.com, or by post: 2702, DASNAC, Jewel of Noida, Sector 75, Noida, UP 201304.
What we collect, why, and how long we keep it
We collect only what each purpose needs. The table lists it by the people it is about.
| People | Data | Why we use it | Basis | How long we keep it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cadets who apply | Name, email, phone, roll number, campus, semester, family members and their work, annual family income, semester marks, supplementary exams, achievements, other scholarships, your answers to the questions, and the documents you upload (marksheets, income certificate, college ID). | To check that you can apply, to score your application, to choose the winners, to pay the grant to your college, and to write to you about your application. | Your consent, which you give on the form. We store the date and the version of the terms you agreed to. | Documents: deleted 90 days after the results of the cycle (the Trust can set a different number of days for a cycle before it opens, and this page then says so). The form, scores and decision: 5 years after the results, so that we can apply the rule on past winners and answer questions. |
| Cadets who win | Name, campus, year of study, grant, amount, and a one-line citation or a photo if you give them. | To pay the grant, to keep the Trust’s accounts, and (only if you agree) to name you on the awardees page. | Your consent for publishing. Keeping the payment record is a legal duty of the Trust. | For as long as the law requires the Trust to keep its accounts. You can withdraw consent to publishing at any time. We then remove your name from the site. |
| Donors | Name, email, phone (optional), class or pass-out year, campus, the grant and the amount, the payment reference (UTR), the bank statement line of your gift, and your PAN and address if you ask for a tax receipt. | To match your gift with the bank statement, to send your receipt, to count your gift for your batch, and (only if you choose) to show your name on the donor wall. | Your consent. Keeping gift and receipt records is a legal duty of the Trust. | For as long as the law requires the Trust to keep its accounts. Your name leaves the donor wall when you ask. |
| Alumni with a profile | Name, institute, campus, batch, roll number (to check that you are an alumnus), work, city, country, links, a short bio, a photo, your privacy choices, and mentoring requests. | To run the alumni directory and the mentoring service, and to show each field only to the people you choose. | Your consent. You choose what each field shows, and to whom. | Until you delete your profile. Mentoring requests: 2 years after they close. |
| Everyone who signs in | Your email address, the one-time sign-in codes we send, and a session cookie. | To sign you in without a password. | Your consent, when you ask for a code. | Sign-in codes expire after 10 minutes. The session cookie ends when you sign out or after 30 days. |
| Every visitor | The IP address of each request, for a short time. | To stop abuse, for example too many sign-in codes to one address. | Legitimate use: keeping the site safe. | A few days at most. We use no advertising cookies and no third-party tracking. |
Who sees your data
- You. You can see your application, your gifts and your profile when you sign in.
- Coordinators of the scholarship see the applications of the cycle they run.
- Assessors on the panel of that year see an application code, not your name or contact details. Your documents may still show your name.
- The treasurer sees donor details and the bank statement lines.
- Alumni moderators see the details they need to check that a profile belongs to an alumnus.
- Your college gets the name and roll number of each winner, because the Trust pays the grant to the college fee account. For a grant that a family pays directly, that family gets the winner’s name and the contact details it needs to pay.
- The public sees only what you agree to publish: an awardee’s name and grant, a donor’s name on the wall, a story told with written consent, and the fields of a profile you make public.
Each volunteer signs in with their own account and sees only what their role needs. The admin logs every change.
We use these service providers to run the site. They process data only on our instructions: hosting (Vercel, Mumbai region), database and file storage (Supabase, Mumbai region), email delivery (Resend), and an AI service for the reading helper and the assistant below. We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for marketing.
A coordinator can use an AI reading helper to read the marks in your marksheets and the income in your income certificate. The site then sends those documents to an AI service, which proposes the values. The coordinator checks each value against your scans before it counts. The AI does not decide who gets a grant. The AI service deletes the documents and its answers within 30 days, unless the law or its safety rules require it to keep them longer. It does not train its models on them.
When the “Ask the Trust” assistant is on, the questions you type in it go to the same AI service, which writes the answers from the public pages of this site. The assistant cannot see applications or donations. We do not store your questions. The AI service deletes them within 30 days, as above. Do not type personal details in it.
Cookies. This site sets only the cookies it needs to work. They keep cadets, alumni and staff signed in, and remember your cookie choice for 12 months. The assistant keeps your conversation in your browser until you close the tab. When the bot check is on, Cloudflare Turnstile checks that a person, not a program, uses the assistant. The site uses no analytics and shows no content from other sites, so it sets no optional cookies today. If the Trust adds them, they will run only when you allow them. You can change your choice at any time with “Cookie preferences” at the bottom of each page.
How we protect it
Applicant documents are private files: only you, the coordinators and that year’s panel can open them, and never through a public link. Connections to the site are encrypted. Access is by role, and we record who changed what.
A photo or a story that you send from the share page stays private until a content editor approves it: we then publish it with your name as the credit and without the location data of the photo, and we delete at once a file that we do not use.
Your rights
Under the DPDP Act you can ask us to:
- Tell you what personal data of yours we process, what we do with it, and with whom we share it.
- Correct or complete data that is wrong or incomplete, or update it.
- Erase your data. We erase it unless a law requires us to keep it (for example, gift and payment records).
- Withdraw your consent at any time. It is as easy as giving it: write to us. If you withdraw consent for an application before the results, the panel cannot assess it.
- Nominate a person who can use these rights for you if you die or cannot act.
To use a right, write to dmetalumnischolarship@gmail.com from the email address you use on this site. We may ask you to confirm who you are. We aim to reply within 30 days.
Complaints
If you have a complaint about how we handle your data, write to us first at dmetalumnischolarship@gmail.com. If our answer does not settle it, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
Cadets under 18
The scholarship is for cadets in their third or fourth year, who are adults. If you are under 18, write to us before you apply: we need the consent of your parent or guardian.
Your part
Give true information and upload your own documents. A false statement or a document that is not genuine ends the application.
Changes to this notice
When we change this notice, we change the version and the date at the top. If a change affects what you agreed to, we ask you again before we use your data in the new way.