IIT professor threatened for exposing wrongdoings
By Neha Singhvi

The best and brightest among Indian students went to study at IIT, many of whom would later lay the foundation of our booming IT-ITES outsourcing sectors. Now, a professor of one of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology has been warned against raising his voice to demand transparency in the IIT admission process.

Highly regarded Prof Rajeev Kumar, who revealed discrepancies in the 2006 admissions, has been warned by an IIT Kharagpur administrator that he was “cutting” his hand by challenging the institutes, triggering charges of threatening the whistleblower.

The “threat” was made before the Central Information Commission (CIC) as it heard Right to Information appeals by Kumar, and has been recorded in the CIC’s order.

“By doing this, you are cutting your hand,” IIT Kharagpur officiating registrar T.K. Ghoshal told Kumar at the March 19 hearing at the CIC here, according to the order.

The case is being heard by information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.

Through RTI queries in 2007, Kumar found out that at least 994 deserving students were denied admission to the IITs in 2006 because of a faulty cut-off procedure.

Ghoshal claimed that his comment was not intended as a threat, and merely represented his defence of the IITs. “I believe that if I am a part of an institution, I am hurting myself if I tarnish the image of that institution. It was with that meaning that I made the comment,” he later said.

Kumar, who has repeatedly said he is merely pointing out problems with the Joint Entrance Examination and wants a more transparent and improved system in place, however, argued that the statement was very much a threat.

“This was a very direct threat suggesting that I would be harmed if I continued to challenge wrongdoing that is hurting the IIT system. The threat is a result of fear because many more dirty secrets could spill out,” Kumar said.

The IITs in 2006 violated their own stated procedure for determining subject cut-offs — for physics, chemistry and math — and instead used cut-offs that were completely different and which they could not explain.

As a result, at least 994 students, who would have got seats had the IITs followed their own stated admission procedure, were denied the opportunity to study in India’s premier engineering schools.