Shimla, Aug 3
The Himachal Pradesh State Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Commission has served a notice to all the private Educational institutions of higher learning seeking details of PhD degrees as ”something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’. The Metaphor of Shakesperian famous play ‘Hamlet’ appears to be quite relevant here after the unearthing of one of the biggest scams of sale of fake degrees in different streams from graduate to PhD by some of the universities in the state.
The HPSPEIRC took suo moto action on the complaint of a student last year who had enrolled with Arni University Kangra ( a private education institution) eight years ago and deposited the fee. Still, the complaint apprised the commission that after many years neither guide was provided to him nor any communications were received.
The official source in the commission confirmed that doubt might be on the applicant why he did not try to pursue the case with education institution after passing so many years may seem fishy. This led the commission to seek these entire records to further hand over for a probe in the matter by the expert committee constituted to reveal the truth.
The HPSPEIRC Secretary sent a communication on Nov. 2021 to all the Registrars of Pvt universities except MBU seeking detail of Ph. D degrees since the inception of their institutions. The commisison has asked the universities to submit the detail of all Ph.D students or degrees under two proforma A & B to commission within 15 days. The performa sought by the commission include detail of guide or supervisor, date of joining of supervisiors, copy of date of award of Ph.D degree to Supervisior 2008 to 2021. Among the copy of letter of RDC topic approved, name of streams or courses and status of degrees along with copy of adverstisment for Ph.D degrees in the media. Universities in the 2nd performa have been asked to submit the Serial Nos., enrollment year, name of students, father and supervisior, date of enrollment and registeration, Date of submission of thesis, date of award of the PhD degrees. It also seeks details about where the candidates were pursuing the PhD degrees whether he or she was the employee of any another organisation at same time, if yes name and full address of organisation.
It is worthwhile to mention here that a SIT of state CID sleauth is also probing the matter against some of the universtities and degree holders and others in the state, country and abroad as number of fake degrees have unearthed and FIR was lodged againist the Manav Bharati university in the matter.
There are reports that more than 35000 fake degrees were sold however probe to verify lakhs of degrees is underway. These degrees belonged to various streams or courses from graduate to Ph.D and many degrees were also sold which were not approved by any authorties.
