Masroor Ahmad Beg, Principal of Zakir Hussain College Principal and Pawan Sharma, Principal of Dyal Singh College (Evening) have been accused of plagiarism.
Members of Indian National Teachers’ Congress and Delhi University academic council submitted their complaints to the UGC chairman and DU vice-chancellor Yogesh Tyagi against both the Principals. It has been alleged that Masroor Ahmad Beg has plagiarized several papers. Many papers have been copied from the work of Sukhadeo Thorat- a noted economist and a former UGC chairperson to get promoted from the current designation. Beg is also alleged to have plagiarized a paper of Dr Rakhi Gupta and Divya Gupta Choudhary.
The complaint signed by several currents and former academic council and executive council members was sent on June 20. The complaint also mentioned the following –
“One of the UGC guidelines laid down states that a minimum API score of 400 is required to be selected at the post of principal; Masroor Ahmad Beg manipulated his work, copied full papers of other authors without mentioning or giving credit to meet the eligibility criteria. Based on this, he was appointed as a principal. Also, it is being claimed that the paper which Beg stated in his work titled, ‘A Comparative Analysis of Poverty of Indian Minorities concerning the Majority’ was published in 2018 has been copied from a work of Thorat’s paper which he co-authored with Mashkoor Ahmad. ‘Minorities and poverty: Why some minorities are poorer than others?’ was published in the Journal of Social Inclusion Studies in 2015.”
Similarly, such charges have been levelled against Pawan Sharma as well. According to Naveen Gaur, an Academic Council (AC) member has repeatedly been sending complaints against him. He states that the “Training and Development” book authored by Dr Pawan Kumar has been highly plagiarised. As per the Turnitin report, the plagiarism is under Level 3.
However, Pawan Sharma has other claims. He states that he has an accurate Turnitin report, which shows 0% plagiarism. He further claims that all these allegations are being put forward as he has an extended-term as a Principal, and people do not want him to continue. In a separate letter to the UGC, Naveen Gaur said that the concerned authorities should constitute a Departmental Academic Integrity Panel and Institutional Academic Integrity Panel to probe the allegations under the “Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions Regulations 2018.”
Balaram Pani, Dean of Colleges, has stated that university authorities will decide sometime later as to what to do currently as the administration is busy with examinations. Furthermore, Dyal Singh College governing body chairman Rajiv Nayan said a three-member committee had been delegated to look into the matter.
