Eight professors from the School of Physical Sciences Department, Jawaharlal Nehru University have filed a complaint to the President of India with allegations of ‘gross violation of ethics’ in the faculty recruitment.
The letter alleges that all seven candidates hired in October are selected through bypassing the ethics and procedures.
“Sir, we bring to your kind attention the gross violation of ethics and procedures that have occurred during the recent round of recruitments related to the School of Physical Sciences (SPS), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,” reads the letter to the president.
The letter, accessed by Maktoob, is dated on 23 November 2020 and a copy is sent to Vice-Chancellor of JNU. The letter is signed by Sanjay Puri, S.S.W. Murthy, Subhasis Ghosh, Sankar Prasad Das, Subir Kumar Sarkar, Brijesh Kumar, Satyavrata Patnaik and Debashish Ghoshal.
The letter states that all procedure was ‘hacked’ during the recent faculty recruitment. Each post requires a special screening committee, whose members have to be experts in the area of specialization advertised for the post or have a broad knowledge of the subject.
According to standard procedure, long hours are spent auditing the profiles of each candidate including evaluation of their research papers, if necessary. This ensures a fair trial in regard to selection for the post.
Any kind of alteration is only allowed to be done by the constituted screening committee, other than that, the complete process becomes illegitimate.
The letter has 11 pointers which contest the standard procedure and details the violations.
“There were several strong candidates among the ones shortlisted by the screening committee. Yet, flimsy excuses were invoked multiple times in an attempt to change this list. The screening committee did not oblige. The end result was: ‘None Found Suitable’.”
The most astonishing fact was if the members tried not to give in to the forceful implementation of this corruptive behaviour, they were warned about the outcome ‘None Found Suitable’ which did happen when the committee members did not oblige to the pressure.
