The Madhya Pradesh’s director of technical education Ashish Dongre is set to be stripped of the doctorate degree awarded to him after a high-level committee found him guilty of plagiarism in his PhD thesis.
The Rajeev Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidhyalaya (RGPV) is set to cancel Dongre’s degree at an executive committee meeting scheduled for February 17.
The probe panel, comprising professors from the IIT, NLIU and the SGITS, submitted a report to the RGPV in which it said Dongre had copied 112 pages of the thesis from another source. “Dongre’s PhD would be cancelled in the executive committee meeting,” a university official said.
Dongre, however, refuted the charges. “To take reference from any study can’t be called plagiarism... Even my final viva was done by vice-chancellor Piyush Trivedi. If any committee was probing the matter based on an anonymous complaint, they should have asked me to present my views. I didn’t even receive a letter,” he said.