Babus shifted in AICTE ‘revamp’

Corruption-ridden All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has made a seeming attempt at cleaning up its act, shifting out heads of all its regional offices except Bhopal, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 9, 2008, 24:48:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Corruption-ridden All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has made a seeming attempt at cleaning up its act, shifting out heads of all its regional offices except Bhopal, and announcing it would get rid of all tainted officials in the next two months.

Member-secretary Dr K Narayana Rao admitted there were charges of irregularities against several AICTE babus. Hindustan Times has repeatedly exposed malpractices in the functioning of India’s top regulator of technical education institutes — this, however, is the first time that a senior AICTE official has conceded this publicly.

The “preliminary round of revamp” — as Rao described the transfers on Thursday — has not impressed many, however. Experts in the field said the move was “an eyewash” to impress political bosses and the media. They also suspected it was aimed at diverting attention from the appointment of R A Yadav, the controversial acting chairperson, as council chief.

“Unless there is a check on corruption during the inspection of institutes, nothing will change,” said the director of a city-based technical education institute.

AICTE’s regional offices are considered dens of corruption because they are authorized to carry out inspections before the council gives its approval to a new institution.

The transfers that began on Wednesday, included the shifting of Om Dalal of Chandigarh, who had got an earlier transfer order cancelled within a couple of days of its issuance in July 2007. Another officer under the scanner, S P Singh of Kanpur, has been transferred too. Two senior officials at AICTE’s Delhi headquarters have been shifted.

AICTE’s regional offices have given a preliminary nod to a large number of new institutions and courses in the next academic session. The way AICTE goes about inspecting these approvals before putting the final seal on them, is expected to be the litmus test for the council’s credibility.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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