‘Shocking’: JNU Professor Named By CBI Suspended Over NAAC Corruption Allegations – News18

Last Updated:February 04, 2025, 10:57 IST

The CBI on Saturday arrested 10 people, including the chairperson of an inspection committee of NAAC, who is also a vice-chancellor (V-C) of a university and the team’s six members, one of whom is Rajeev Sijariya, a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor, for “corruption”.

Within two years after it ran into allegations of irregularities prompting the Central government to task an expert panel, to suggest major reforms in the system for an overhaul, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), that grades colleges and universities, has again been called out for a new set of “wrongdoings”, this time by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The CBI on Saturday arrested 10 people, including the chairperson of an inspection committee of NAAC, who is also a vice-chancellor (V-C) of a university and the team’s six members, one of whom is Rajeev Sijariya, a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor, for “corruption”.

JNU prof suspended after the FIR

Sijariya, a professor with JNU’s Atal Bihari School of Management and Entrepreneurship (ABVSME) and chairperson at the Special Centre for E-learning, was on Monday suspended by the university.

According to faculty members, Sijariya’s “conduct had come into question even before” when he was the dean of the management school after which his tenure was cut short as the head of the department.

Those arrested also include the V-C of Andhra Pradesh’s Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation (KLEF) in Guntur and its two executives. The CBI FIR also names NAAC’s advisor and former deputy advisor as “accused”. The arrested persons have been found to be giving and accepting huge bribes in both cash and kind, including gold, laptops, and mobile phones in exchange for a favourable report to get top NAAC grades (A++).

NAAC, set up in 1994, is tasked with assessing quality of education and other parameters of higher education institutions (HEIs) across the country.

‘Weeded out 10 such experts over past year’

Calling the involvement of its inspection committee head and all the professors in this case “shocking”, Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairperson, NAAC Executive Committee, told News18 that “necessary steps had been underway for course correction”.

“This is shocking. Especially, while we were in the process of bringing reforms, over the last one year, we had taken action against at least 10 such experts, whom we had hot negative reports about after cross-checking and counter questioning them. We thought this was checked. And more so since as part of the reforms, now a computer algorithm picks the experts for inspections for the major discipline domains who go out to universities. The computer throws up two names from which the NAAC director picks one. But we certainly have to go deeper about this and check for others whom we have suspicion on. This CBI investigation has helped us weed out such elements operating within the system and has shown us the way to go,” said Sahasrabudhe.

Also, he said that it was being double-checked if suddenly an institution was getting the top grades repeatedly. If the suspicion in such cases came out to be true, the inspection visits were carried out afresh each time. This also resulted in some institutions grades being lowered. There were also cases where some good institutions were being given low grades even though they deserved a higher rating. As part of the checks, these institutions then were given the deserved high grades as well.

“We have also been telling institutions not to indulge in any gifting and such activities. The experts also have to give an undertaking for the same before they set out for an inspection. These loopholes that have come out will be plugged,” he said.

Sahasrabudhe added that once the major reform suggested by an expert panel of introducing maturity-based (multi-level) system of accreditation (where there is industry involvement) comes into place, it will be able to do away with the scope of such illicit activities. “The maturity-based accreditation system is in the works. We have a major brainstorming session scheduled on February 16-17 where 40-50 experts will gather to discuss the format. Probably, the format will be evolved by the end of this month, and it will be rolled out this month-end itself. It should be very robust like it is in case of NBA and NIRF. We want it to be the same in NAAC also, where people have 100% trust and confidence in its work,” he told.

The Centre had set up an Overarching Committee headed by former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan to suggest reforms in the functioning of NAAC. The panel had come out with its recommendations last January. The reforms are still in the process of being implemented.

Irregularities flagged first in 2023

In March 2023, NAAC’s executive committee chairperson Bhushan Patwardhan resigned from his post after repeatedly demanding an independent inquiry into the functioning of the council. He had flagged irregularities in its functioning. The Union Education Ministry had in November 2022 appointed an overarching committee to suggest reforms in the assessment and accreditation system, which became even more crucial following the resignation.

The panel led by former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan, to propose transformative reforms for strengthening assessment and accreditation of higher education institutions in India had in January 2024 submitted its report to the government.

What were the recommended reforms

The report recommended a binary accreditation (either accredited or not accredited) system rather than grades to encourage all institutions to get on-boarded in the accreditation process, thereby, creating a quality culture in the higher education system.

The reforms also include a maturity-based graded accreditation, which means multiple levels of grading – Level 1-5 – to encourage accredited institutions to raise their bar, continuously improve, evolve in-depth or in-breadth in disciplines from ‘Level 1’ to ‘Level 4’ as Institutions of National Excellence, and then to ‘Level 5’ i.e. Institutions of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education.

NAAC’s executive committee in its 104th meeting in January last year had decided that the reforms recommended in the final report will be implemented in two stages — binary system in the next four months and maturity-based (multi-level) system from December 2024.

The reforms, the report had said, were proposed with a strategic intent to be consistent with the Vision of NEP 2020, adopt a simple, trust-based, credible, objective and rationalised system for approval, accreditation and ranking of HEIs, with a technology-driven modern system that could replace or minimise manual involvement to make the accreditation process transparent and integrate the inputs of the stakeholders.