IIT-Roorkee in dock over mass copying at Bhatinda

Updated on: Wednesday, October 19, 2011

IITs, considered as the repository of high standard, do not think copying is a crime. The Joint Admission Board (JAB), which conducts Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to IITs, has directed IIT-Roorkee to file an FIR on mass copying in the Bhatinda centre during this year’s entrance test that was held more than four months ago.

In an RTI reply, IIT-Roorkee has said the FIR has not been lodged and the decision is still pending. IIT-Roorkee was asked to file an FIR since two of its faculty members – Prakash Biswas and C S P Ojha – were sent as invigilators to the Bhatinda centre for conducting the JEE.

A fact-finding committee, set up by JAB, has barred Biwas and Ojha along with Sushil Kumar, another IIT-Roorkee staff, from any JEE-related activities for five years. The report had said that there “appears to be some undesirable nexus amongst the college authorities, certain invigilators and an employee of Giani Zail Singh College of Engineering and Technology”.

During IIT-JEE 2011, a candidate at Giani Zail Singh College of Engineering & Technology in Bhatinda had lodged a written complaint that some of the JEE candidates in her exam room were helped by the invigilators and college staff.

The then JAB chairman Sanjay G Dhande advised the director of IIT-Roorkee “to lodge an FIR with the concerned police authorities so that the matter could be further investigated to apportion the blame on the concerned person(s).”

Sources said, IIT-Roorkee teachers — Ojha belonged to civil engineering and Biswas to chemical engineering department — maintained silence on the complaint.

The matter was not reported by any IIT-Roorkee faculty members, but by a JEE candidate’s parent, who lodged a written complaint with Sanjay Dhande, chairman of JAB and director of IIT-Kanpur.

This is not the first time that a case of mass-copying in JEE has been reported. In 2008, mass copying was reported from the Kota centre. Later, JAB decided to cancel Kota as an IIT-JEE centre, even though no FIR was lodged and no inquiry committee’s findings were made publicly available.

IIT-Roorkee in dock over mass copying at Bhatinda

More Education news