The Department of Collegiate Education (DCE) is planning to lodge police complaints against persons who produced fake documents to get the post of assistant professor in government first grade degree colleges.
The fraud came to light when DCE officials started verifying the details they had provided for the recruitment process.
“When we sent documents to different universities and the University Grants Commission (UGC), they told us that some of them were fake, and asked us to file police complaints and initiate action against the candidates,” said M.N. Ajay Nagabhushan, DCE Commissioner.
For the recruitment process, the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) conducted an entrance test and issued the provisional merit list with 2,034 candidates in January this year.
Of the 80 candidates deemed ineligible, the department found that 23 had provided fake Ph.D certificates and one candidate had submitted a false National Eligibility Test (NET) certificate. These include fake certificates from existing universities outside the State, while one candidates even furnished a Ph.D certificate from a non-existent university in South Africa. The DCE authorities contacted the embassy officials to verify if there was indeed a university in this regard, and found it to be fake.
The inquiry was conducted by a three-member committee consisting of Registrars of Bengaluru, Tumakuru and Mysuru universities.
The department is still in the process of completing the verification process and as many as 203 out of the total 1,168 NET certificates submitted to UGC had a mismatch in photos. “We will write to KEA to collect the coloured photocopies from candidates and send it for verification again,” he said.
Mr. Nagabhushan said the verification process will be completed within a fortnight.
