CM’s Addl Pvt Secy’s Ph.D.: Cong demands probe

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala’s Opposition leader V.D. Satheesan on Wednesday demanded a probe into the Ph.D. of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s additional private secretary Dr. Ratheesh Kaliyadan.

Satheesan, while interacting with the media, said that the students’ wing of the Congress (KSU) had raised the issue of Kaliyadan’s Ph.D., but there has been no response to it from any quarters.

“The KSU has alleged that Kaliyadan got his Ph.D. from Assam University (2012-14). According to the rules, the minimum time taken by a regular candidate for a Ph.D. is three years and if it is part-time, it takes four years, but this official in CM’s office got his doctoral degree in two years,” said Satheesan.

"Another allegation that the KSU has raised is when the check for plagiarism was done on his thesis, it was found to be 70 percent, while the mandatory accepted norm is around 15 percent. We are waiting to hear what CM’s office has to say on this,” Satheesan added.

He also demanded to conduct a probe into the allegations raised by KSU.

In the past weeks, few incidents of forgery and production of fake certificates by SFI activists have surfaced and a former SFI activist K. Vidya was jailed after it emerged that she managed to get a guest lecturer job using a forged experience certificate.

The KSU activists are now waiting to hear from the UGC and Assam University about Kaliaydan’s Ph.D.

The Congress-led UDF has been up in arms against the alleged collapse of the higher education sector in the state and even the Chancellor, Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan expressed grave concern on the happenings leading to what he termed "extremely serious".

With inputs from IANS