KOCHI: The KSU on Monday demanded that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan remove his additional private secretary Ratheesh Kaliyadan from the post alleging plagiarism in his PhD thesis. Ratheesh, who worked as a higher secondary teacher at Thalassery Govt Girls’ Higher Secondary School from 2009 to 2017, had secured his PhD from Assam University in 2014, alleged KSU state president Aloysius Xavier.
Ratheesh completed his PhD titled “A study on the effectiveness of the critical pedagogic approach for media education at higher secondary level in Kerala” within two years, and the plagiarism in the thesis was 70% as per the plagiarism checking software Turnitin. The content was copied from the internet, periodicals and academic publications,” he alleged.
“Though it takes at least three years to complete PhD, Ratheesh completed the research in two years. He was drawing government salary as a higher secondary teacher while pursuing the course. As per guidelines, the researcher should have more than 80% attendance at the research centre while pursuing a PhD full-time. The government should probe how he got the attendance while working as a teacher in a government school,” he said.