HYDERABAD: Faculty members who were blacklisted by the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTUH) in 2016 for holding fraudulent PhD degrees, seems to be back in business with several of them allegedly turning into research guides in private universities and autonomous colleges in both the Telugu States.
They are now providing guidance for doctoral programmes as research supervisors in these institutions.
In 2016, JNTU-H had detected massive anomaly in the data uploaded by the faculty on its portal and over 900 faculty members with dubious records were caught and another eight were blacklisted due to the severity of the fraud they had committed.
According to JNTUH officials, despite being given the marching orders and being blacklisted, several of these members are now acting as postdoctoral guides to five to eight PhD scholars who are working under them for their PhD degrees in these institutions.
Though registrar Prof N Yadaiah has refuted the allegations and claimed that "any faculty blacklisted by the varsity can't be taken on board by any other institution," faculty members in JNTUH affiliated colleges have alleged that the measures taken by the university were not tough enough to deter faculty members from furnishing faulty academic credentials or institutions from recruiting them.
"Since the fiasco, JNTUH released the list of faculty members with dubious credentials but nothing has deterred them and currently two of these members were listed as regular faculty working in a private university in the City. Even without having a PhD degree they are now acting as research supervisors and are nurturing a group of researchers," said an assistant professor from the University.
In addition, this particular university has retained names for three faculty members who are no longer working there. As a result, their names now appear on the list of faculty of two institutions -- both former and current.
Duplication of faculty is also rampant. "To fool the system one faculty gets one identification number in their full name and in other, they use their abbreviated name. Some colleges list faculty who do not have PhDs or are pursuing the same from other institutions. This gets unnoticed because there is not enough inspection," said a faculty member from a JNTU affiliated college, in the city.
JNTUH, meanwhile, has instructed affiliated colleges to update any changes in the details, accreditation, autonomous status etc., regularly on their websites. It also warned that any discrepancy in this regard would call for disciplinary action against the erring colleges.
In a circular issued last December, it had warned that it had observed that "in certain affiliated colleges there was a mismatch in the faculty details between their websites and the data uploaded in UAAC portal. It is also observed that the faculty members who are blacklisted/disqualified/ resigned are still being shown in the respective websites."