PUDUCHERRY: The Supreme Court has dismissed a plea by
Pondicherry University vice-chancellor
Chandra Krishnamurthy
challenging the Union human resource ministry’s order placing her under compulsory wait following plagiarism charges against her. She also challenged a showcase notices issued by the ministry asking why she should not be dismissed for academic fraud.
A bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur on Monday directed Chandra to reply to the showcase notice issued by the ministry within three weeks.
Earlier, the Madras high court dismissed her plea to quash the ministry’s showcase notice to her. She moved the Supreme Court challenging the high court order.
The ministry issued a showcase notice to her in August last year after a fact-finding committee submitted its report concluding that Chandra was guilty of plagiarism and misrepresentation of facts while applying for the post of vice-chancellor. Chandra did not reply to the notice until now.
The committee comprised of former vice-chancellor of Central University of Punjab Jai Rup Singh, former secretary to the Union government Nita Chowdhury and former director of Indian Law Institute, Delhi, K N Chandersekhran Pillai.
The committee declared that Chandra had only one book published to her credit and not three books as claimed by her. Her lone book, ‘Legal Education in India’ by M/s Himalaya Publishing House was 98% plagiarised.
The committee collected information from the Society for Scientific Values president K L Chopra, who was the former director of IIT - Kharagpur and University Grant Commission’s Information and Library Network (Inflibnet) director Jagdish Arora. “Both asserted that Chandra did resort to plagiarism,” the report said.
“The entire book is almost total plagiarised. It has verbatim reproduced entire contents of papers / chapters published earlier by others. Even the introduction and preface are heavily plagiarised. A bibliography given at the end also has large chunks reproduced verbatim from the bibliography of another author’s work,” Chopra replied when the committee sought him information in this issue.
It concluded that it could trace only one publication in open repository whereas Chandra in her CV claimed that she has 25 publications in leading journals. The one publication, which was traced by the committee, was about 75% plagiarised.
"It turned out that the vice-chancellor does not have all the publications as claimed by her in her CV submitted for consideration for the post of vice-chancellor of Pondicherry University," the report said.
The committee collected evidence to show the fakeness and non-academic nature of the degree of doctor of literature (honoris causa) of her. “It also came out that her degree of doctor of literature (honoris causa) was awarded by an institution in Sri Lanka, notorious for selling degrees,” the report said.
It could not find any evidence that Chandra guided nine PhD students as claimed by her. Similarly, it could not find any evidence that she received four major research projects. The committee could not find any record to authenticate that Chandra had the title of a ‘professor’ before her appointment as vice-chancellor of Pondicherry University.
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