Aryabhatta College Principal has been accused of plagiarism. He has been teaching for 29 years. He has published five books and eleven journal papers out of which Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University claims that certainly eight out of these and other four works have been highly plagiarised. Six of them have been verified.
To be eligible for the post of principal, a candidate requires a minimum API of 400 points. Mr Sinha scored around 170 points in his application against the 12 publications to which plagiarism charges have been raised. The method to check plagiarism is by a software “Turnitin” which shows that the publications have a “similarity index” ranging between 60% to 90%.
As reported by The Hindu, the same software has also been used in many universities to check P.H.D level papers before publishing them in the final year.
According to a report byThe Hindu, research papers with the sources also showed that several sections in different papers were lifted verbatim and not quoted or cited as a reference. The content has also been plagiarized from “Public Policy Making in India” and “The political economy of government responsiveness: theory and evidence from India” published in 2002. The complaint also signified Mr Sinha publishing same material in two places and taking credit for it twice from papers like “Ecological Aspects of Social and Environmental Changes in India and Canada” and “Globalization and Consumerism.”
Mr Manoj Sinha told The Hindu, that the paper was published in a book without his knowledge by the organisers of a conference he presented the paper at in Allahabad. The rest he couldn’t remember when they were written.
The Delhi University Teachers’ Association, wrote to Delhi University’s Vice Chancellor for an independent and speedy inquiry into the matter.
