The Hindu : Guide, student cleared of plagiarism charge

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 08, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Guide, student cleared of plagiarism charge

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE June 7. A Bangalore University Ph.D. guide, B.C. Mylarappa, and his student, Venkataramanappa, both accused of "plagiarism" in their doctoral theses, have been cleared of the charges by two expert committees constituted by the university. The final report of the two committees will be placed before the varsity's academic council on June 13.

In its report on the charges against Mr. Venkataramanappa, the expert committee observed that first two chapters of his thesis were similar to that of his guide's book. However, this

did not amount to "plagiarism" as the guide had "permitted" him to use inputs from the book. The subsequent chapters, the committee noted, were based on independent inputs by the candidate.

This committee comprised three members of the University Grants Commission (UGC) panel of experts, who were also members of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) experts' panel. The members were Hira Adhyanthaya, Vice-Chancellor of the Pune-based Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeetha, S.V. Shirol from a research institute in Kolhapur, and Venkataratnam from Madurai Kamaraj University.

The covering letter attached to the panel report had some disturbing news for the university. It said that some members had been continuously sending newspaper clippings and making threatening calls to influence the report to be written in a particular way. This, the letter observed, did not speak well of the university and should be curbed. In the report on the allegations against Mr. Mylarappa, the expert committee of M.H. Makwana of Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, and N. Sudhakar Rao of Assam University, confirmed that he had borrowed extensively from three books, one of them related to the census of State Government on Kolar District.

The panel, however, noted that this too could not be considered as "plagiarism" as the census report was a public document. Further, Mr. Mylarappa had acknowledged the report in his book and not owned it as his own. The subsequent chapters contained independent work of the candidate for which the thesis was awarded, the committee noted.

On the similarity between the doctoral works of Mr. Mylarappa and his candidate, the committee felt the topics were similar. While Mr. Mylarappa's research was on "Agricultural labour," Mr. Venkataramanappa's doctoral work was on "Small farms."The charges against Mr. Venkataramanappa were lodged by an academic council member, Vasudevamurthy while the allegations against Mr. Mylarappa were levelled by Venkatasubbaiah, Somashekhar and his colleagues. The two reports are to be sent to the university Syndicate on June 17.

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