B'lore varsity V-C may face defamation case

A few members of the Bangalore University (BU) Syndicate have threatened to file a defamation suit against the Vice Chancellor for accusing them of indirectly supporting plagiarism.

D S Krishna, one of the members, said he would drag the V-C to court for accusing him of supporting copying. Some other members would also file similar suits, he said.  In a letter on May 28, Vice Chancellor N Prabhu Dev stated that six members — C K Jagadish Prasad, Krishna, Manasa Nagabhushan, T H Sreenivasaiah, Zaheda Mulla, M B Girish — “did not give approval to the withdrawal of PhD degree awarded to M Venkataramanappa (who is accused of plagiarism), thereby indirectly supporting copying.”

Venkataramanappa allegedly “copied word by word more than 100 pages from the thesis of his guide B C Mylarappa”. The university’s Academic Council had resolved on May 9, 2012, to withdraw the degree. The Syndicate was to ratify it. Krishna says the V-C did not call any meeting of the Syndicate. Instead, he circulated a resolution among the members, asking them to vote by May 23 for the withdrawal of the degree. 

According to Krishna, the resolution reached him and others on May 21. “We told the V-C to convene a meeting and let the issue be discussed threadbare. But he didn’t agree,” Krishna told Deccan Herald. 

Things worsened on May 28 when the V-C issued the letter on withdrawal of the degree.

“We were outraged, to say the least. We neither supported the withdrawal of the degree nor opposed it. All we wanted was a debate by the Syndicate,” he said. 

Mylarappa, the BU Registrar (Administration) and a bitter critic of Dev, denied plagiarism.

“I was the guide and I can emphatically say that the thesis was not plagiarised,” he said. According to him, the V-C is “acting with vengeance as I acted against some of his people”. 

Well-placed sources say the V-C is well within his right to circulate a resolution on an issue and ask members to vote for or against it.