NAAC team head bent rules to become V-C

Updated on: Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Even as the future of deemed universities is in limbo,the countrys assessment body has found that the process of awarding grades to some of them has not been entirely fair. A reputed scientist, who was heading a National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) assessment team, breached rules and went on to soon become the vice chancellor of the same deemed university.

In its most recent executive council meeting, NAAC pulled up Ashok Kolaskar,who awarded an A grade to the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), months before he bagged an offer to head the university.

Kolaskar, who was earlier the V-C of Pune University,and Maharashtra governor K Sankarnarayanan's nominee in the committee which recently selected the V-C of the University of Mumbai,has been pulled up by the council for taking up the top job at KIIT. The chairman of the peer team, which visited KIIT for accreditation, has been appointed as vice-chancellor of KIIT within a year after the declaration of results, the minutes from the 53rd NAAC meeting stated.

Experts appointed to grade universities are bound by an agreement the code of conduct and ethical standards. It does not permit these experts to take up assignments,projects or a job with the institute they accredit for a year after the grade is made public.

On their part,universities and colleges that apply for assessment are also covered by terms that dont allow them to offer positions or paid consultancy to members who visit their campus to grade them. That clause,said NAAC officials,was exploited by Kolaskar and KIIT. The council has now decided to take up the matter with the KIIT management,the ministry of human resource development and the university grants commission.

When TOI contacted Kolaskar,he acknowledged that he joined KIIT as its VC a few months after he went to the deemed university as a part of the NAAC team. But NAAC did not declare the results for ten months after I had submitted my report. "How would I know whether the recommendations Imade were accepted or not by NAAC," asked Kolaskar.

Officials in NAAC, however, differed on the matter and said that Kolaskar should have waited for a year after the grade was made public. The offer from KIIT, said an expert, was probably just too tempting.

NAAC team head bent rules to become V-C

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