Union Minister of State for Tourism, K. J. Alphons has sought action against Neeraj Hatekar, a professor at the Mumbai University (MU), who was found guilty by a high-level inquiry committee of plagiarising his Ph.D thesis from his wife’s M.Phil thesis.
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Mr. Alphons has written to Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar; MU Chancellor and State Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao; and Vice Chancellor Suhas Pednekar on the issue.
A report submitted by the inquiry committee headed by Dr. R. K. Chauhan, Vice Chancellor, Lingaya’s University, in January 2018, had mentioned 25 instances of plagiarism. The inquiry had revealed that substantial parts of Mr. Hatekar’s thesis, ‘Studies in the Theory of Business Cycles with Special Emphasis on Real Business Cycles and their Applications to India,’ had sentences copied word for word from his wife Ranjana Mathur’s dissertation, ‘Rational Expectations, Macroeconomics and Policy’. He has not given the due credit to the author.
He was also held guilty of self-plagiarism for using parts from his other thesis.
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Mr. Hatekar continues to teach at MU and is also working as coordinator for several projects involving huge funds. Mr. Alphons, in his letter to Mr. Javadekar, demanded that immediate and appropriate action be initiated against the professor. He said the guilty should have been dismissed from the service by now, and that the authorities concerned should initiate criminal action against him.
Mr. Hatekar did not respond to calls from The Hindu on Monday.