NEW DELHI: The controversy over ‘eminence’ tag given to Reliance’s yet-to-be established Jio institute is not yet settled.As the issue was raised in the Upper House on Thursday, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar once again clarified that the Jio Institute had applied under the ‘greenfield’ category and that the ministry had only given it a ‘letter of intent’.
The ministry would evaluate the institute’s performance after three years and only then give it the ‘institute of Eminence’ status, he said. To Congress leader Jairam Ramesh’s question about faculty shortage in public institutions, Javadekar replied that the ministry has asked central institutes to scout all over the world for good faculty. “Next month, we will have the IIT council meeting. The IITs will go to all countries and seek to recruit faculty from the Indian diaspora,” he said.
The issues of misuse of social media and leak of question papers of several examinations were also raised in the Rajya Sabha. The minister said the CBSE had taken steps to check recurrence of paper leaks after disaffiliating schools concerned for compromising with the sanctity of exams.
He also spoke of using a software in universities to check instances of plagiarism in Ph.D theses.“It is not true that fake degrees are given in all universities. This issue has come to light only at a few places and we have developed a new software to check plagiarism and we have made it mandatory for all varsities to enforce it,” he said.One member raised the issue of copying in examinations. Javadekar said a National Testing Agency was being considered to conduct examinations in a fool-proof manner.