CHENNAI: CPM state secretary K Balakrishnan on Saturday sought to speed up the three-member panel inquiry on the issue of ghost faculties widely used in private engineering colleges and demanded strict action against the erring college management.
In a statement, he said that Arappor Iyakkam, the voluntary organisation against corruption, exposed the prevalence of ghost faculties in 224 private engineering colleges affiliated with Anna University.
“Anna University Vice-Chancellor Professor R Velraj has pointed out that it is documented that a professor worked as a full-time faculty in 32 colleges. A report released by the University mentioned that 211 persons have filled up 2,500 posts,” he pointed out.
The Left leader wondered how the inspection committee which went directly to the colleges and examined all the documents failed to find this major scandal. He accused the Standing Committee of Anna University of overlooking the mammoth irregularity. “This raises a question of whether they also played a part in it. The question also arises whether this bad practice has only happened in 2023-24 or was it prevalent all through,” he asked.
The CPM leader pointed out that such fraud would only lead deterioration of the quality of education and spoil the future of students. “AICTE, NITTR and Anna University have jointly formed a three-member committee to investigate the scandal. We insist that strict action should be taken not only against the concerned teachers but also against the private engineering college administrations who forced them to work. All the university officers and officials who are connected should be punished. We also insist that the Tamil Nadu government intervene and protect the standards of higher education in the wake of the exposes,” he said.