CHENNAI: The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) on Thursday registered an FIR against 10 Anna University officials — including two former registrars — and three professors as well as four colleges on charges of cheating, collusion, and corruption in the ‘ghost faculty’ scam brought to light by Arappor Iyakkam, an anti-corruption NGO, in July last year.
In its FIR, the DVAC has stated that private engineering colleges colluded with officials of the university’s Centre for Affiliation of Institutions (CAI) to fudge data on number of qualified faculties available with them for affiliation.
Colleges hired faculties, who were already working with other institutions, and university authorities allowed them to be counted as faculty members of multiple institutions at the same time despite inspection reports exposing the hoax. This practice had a direct impact on the quality of education of students and hence was a breach of trust, fraud, and cheating, the FIR said.
Anna University officials aided colleges by giving false reports: DVAC
The DVAC said its inquiry has revealed that this duplication of faculty was seen in 224 of the 480 engineering colleges in 2023-24, and 353 individuals were counted as working as full-time faculty members in more than one engineering college in TN.
Colleges fraudulently inflated the number of faculties on their rolls to satisfy affiliation criteria and save on salary expenses.
Anna University(AU) officials, who were fully aware that these institutes did not have the number of faculties as claimed by them, wilfully facilitated the scam by giving false reports in support of the institutions, the DVAC said.
The accused in the FIR include officials of the affiliation department of AU like its former director Dr A Elayaperumal and deputy directors M Chitra and Shiloah Elizabeth, former university registrars G Ravikumar and J Prakash, former Director of Centre for Affiliation of Institutions VR Giridev, deputy directors of the university’s Coimbatore, Madurai, Tiruchy, and Tirunelveli wings Marshal Anthoni, V Malathi, S Brahadeeswaran and S Silas Sargunam, respectively.
DVAC has also named as accused professor S Marichamy, who was found to be on the rolls of 11 colleges, and professors Y Ravikumar and S Kannan, who were found on the rolls of two colleges each.
zDVAC said that AU’s inspection report found Ravikumar to be working for Prathyusha College and Venkateshwara College of Engineering and Technology in Thiruvallur, while Kannan was found to be on the payrolls of Madha Engineering College in Kancheepuram and Kathir College in Coimbatore.
These four institutions have also been named in the FIR.
The agency has not named R Velraj, the then Vice-chancellor of AU in the FIR.
DVAC had sought permission from Governor-Chancellor RN Ravi to probe him, but he had denied approval. After the state government suspended Velraj on July 31, his retirement day, the governor had revoked the suspension.
The FIR noted that 34 fulltime faculty of Dhanalakshmi Srinivasan College and 33 faculty of TJ Institute of Technology were found to be working with other colleges as fulltime faculty at the same time in 2023-24.
AU officials failed to scrutinise these aspects though it was part of the university’s mandate under AICTE norms. The permission to register the case against university officials was given on May 26, the DVAC FIR said.
Faculty duplication in 224 of 480 colleges
The DVAC in its FIR said duplication of faculty was seen in 224 of the 480 engineering colleges across Tamil Nadu in 2023-24, and 353 individuals were counted as working as fulltime faculty members in more than one engineering college
The story is reported by Siddharth Prabhakar for The New Indian Express
