MDU bends rules to give admission to professor’s son in PhD course

ROHTAK: Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU), Rohtak, flouted the rules to give admission to a professor’s son in PhD economics course at the cost of deserving candidates.

As per sources, the university had initially advertised for eight seats for the PhD course. The criteria for the admission include 10% weightage to graduation marks, 30% weightage to postgraduation marks and 40% to entrance test and interview.

The procedure follows the reservation policy of the state government in admission to universities. A list of break-up of marks given to the candidates, accessed by HT, indicates the panel of interviewing committee deliberately brought the score of other candidates down to push the son of MDU professor Jagdish Nandal up in the list.

Though it may be subjective, the marks show a suspicious pattern, with toppers in graduation, postgraduation and entrance test getting four or five marks out of 10 in the interview, even when Nandal's son gets a nine.

The discrepancy in giving marks, if any, could still not assure the seat to the professor’s son in all three counselling sessions. Then the department decided to increase the PhD seats to 11— a move sources said was done to ensure a seat to professor's son in the course.

The counselling for the added three seats was conducted on Wednesday. The sources said on last minute insistence of some professors in the Economics department, the university prepared a reservation roaster to see which social categories were eligible to get admission in the three seats.

The roaster showed the three seats belonged to a scheduled caste, a scheduled tribe and a physically handicapped candidate as per reservation, because in the eight seats for which the admissions were conducted earlier, four general category candidates were admitted against the vacancy of 3.05 candidates.

Being a general category student, Nandal's son missed the bus yet again, but the university did not stop there. While an SC and an ST candidate occupied the two seats out of three, the seat reserved for a physically handicapped candidate remained vacant at the end of counselling on Wednesday. The rules say the seat should first be offered to the ward of an ex-servicemen or freedom fighter before transferring it to general category.

As per rules and insistence of some professors, the economics department drafted the schedule to hold second and third counselling on October 31 and November 2 for the remaining one seat before transferring it to other category. The draft was sent to the vice-chancellor as per sources. However, to the shock of students, the seat was directly transferred to general category by late Wednesday evening in which the professor’s son was admitted.

This happened when a candidate, the daughter of an ex-serviceman, was present at the spot for counselling. Another candidate alleged he was not given the deserving five marks, as per UGC policy to serving regular teachers, only because he would have become more eligible for the admission in general category than the professor’s son.

When contacted, vice-chancellor Bijender Poonia said he had no role in the process and all procedures were followed by the economics department in the admissions. On being asked why he went ahead with transferring the seat to general category without holding two counselling sessions as drafted by economics department, he claimed he had no knowledge of the draft. He also advised HT to name the source of the information in the story, “otherwise it would be unethical journalism”.

DEPT INCREASED SEATS, A MOVE SOURCES SAID WAS DONE TO ENSURE A SEAT TO PROFESSOR'S SON IN THE COURSE