Moneylife:
Pune: Friday, November 02, 2012.
Rajeev Kumar,
professor of IIT Kharagpur, is consistently using RTI to expose irregularities
in the IIT joint entrance examination and has triumphed by making the entrance
test transparent this year but he has been suspended since 2011. Last week the
HRD ministry had directed IIT Kharagpur to act on his indefinite suspension. An
overview of his amazing battle through RTI
What happens
if you doggedly try to cleanse up a corrupt system? You would be suspended from
work if you happen to be professor Rajeev Kumar, a computer science engineering
professor at IIT Kharagpur, even though the Supreme Court has hailed him
as “one of the many unsung heroes who
helped in improving the system.”
On 22nd
October, the human resources development (HRD) ministry in a letter, had
ordered the Director of IIT Kharagpur for ‘urgent’ revocation of suspension and
appointment of an independent commissioner for departmental enquiry regarding
professor Rajeev Kumar’s indefinite suspension since March 2011. This comes as
a sequel to several reminders made by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to
the IIT management to “examine the issue.” The CVC then on 25 September 2012
brought this indefinite delay to the notice of the HRD ministry which then
issued a letter to the Director, IIT Kharagpur last week. To date, Kumar is
debarred from teaching and research work and entering his departmental office
complex and laboratories.
Ever since
his son missed admission to IIT in 2006 by just three marks, he has been
pursuing the flawed marking and student selection process of the Joint Entrance
Examination (JEE) common to all IITs by filing a string of RTI (Right to
Information) applications. RTI documents showed that 994 top scorers of JEE
2006, the year in which his son too appeared for the entrance examination,
failed to make it to the IITs whereas lower scoring candidates were given
admissions. According to Kumar, “this was due to faulty calculation of cut-off
marks”. So he decided to go about correcting the flawed system to bring in
transparency to this prestigious entrance test so that brilliant students are
not denied entry into the esteemed IITs. His suspicion about the transparency
of the candidate selection system grew when RTI replies revealed that the
optical response sheets of 2006 (answer sheets in layman’s language) were
‘shredded’ (destroyed) despite the rule being that they should be preserved for
one year. Also, the management of the IIT changed its version thrice in the CIC
hearing and court regarding the formula it adopted for calculating cut-off
percentage.
What provoked
this IIT professor to use RTI so rigorously? In September 2006, Kumar read in
the newspapers that the CIC ordered the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission)
to reveal its admission and selection procedure and so was inspired to pursue
the same for IITs.
Thanks to
Kumar’s sustained efforts at the expense of being “threatened, harassed and
victimised by the Director, deans and the registrar of IIT Kharagpur since he
is filing RTI applications and exposing certain wrong-doings (as recorded in a
CIC order)”, for the first time the IIT JEE entrance test of April 2012
displayed transparency. The students were provided carbon copies of their
answer sheets; the model answers have been put up on the IIT website to
facilitate students to cross check their answers and thereby marks and; the
cut-off percentage was announced prior to the examination instead of after
evaluation of the answer sheets. This was a sequel to a Supreme Court judgment
which directed the IITs to upgrade the selection process and make the system
more transparent.
Between
September 2006 and January 2012, Rajeev Kumar has filed over 50 RTI
applications for information on various facets of IIT JEE entrance examination
and other alleged mal-administration in IIT Kharagpur, even as he was fighting
a legal battle in the high court and Supreme Court. He has also filed 39 second
appeals/complaints to the Central Information Commission between May 2007 and
April 2012.
Prof Kumar
has been ironically suspended by the management of IIT Kharagpur in May 2011
for “damaging the reputation of the institute” because he made allegations on
procedures adopted for IIT JEE entrance examination, exposed copying in these
examinations and highlighted irregularities in purchase of laptops. The
management of IIT Kharagpur in turn has alleged his involvement in corruption
in purchase of laptops. As per rules, it is mandatory to form a committee to
review his suspension as he comes under the Central Civil Service Rules of
1965. IIT Kharagpur, though stated that it has its own set of statutory rules
for suspension cases, has issued him a letter saying that his suspension would
continue till further orders. The HRD ministry in its letter has scuttled that
argument.
Kumar filed
his first RTI application in September 2006 seeking information on the cut-off
marks for each subject (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics) and marks scored by
the top 2,000 students who had got through to IITs. IIT-JEE tests examine the
analytical abilities of a student in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. The
students get a call for ‘counselling’ if they clear the pre-determined cut-off
marks set for each subject as well as score the required aggregate marks.
After the PIO
failed to reply, Kumar filed a first appeal but that too was ignored. He then
filed a second appeal to the CIC. Kumar also simultaneously filed another RTI
application asking for the procedure followed to determine the cut-off marks,
the question paper with model answers and names of all the people associated
with the examination procedure of 2006.
The PIO of IIT stated in an evasive reply that there was “no set
procedure to determine cut-off marks” and also refused to reveal the question
paper. Then he filed a third application in January 2007 on the number of
students who got marks above the cut-off marks and had got selected.
In April
2007, the CIC ordered the IIT Kharagpur to provide him the required information
on all the three RTI applications he had filed. The information finally
provided to him but did not explain how they reached that cut-off. IIT gave yet
another explanation of the cut-off system in September 2007 and then submitted
a third explanation to Kolkata High Court in August 2009. This proved there was
no proper system.
In fact, for
years, says Kumar, the selection of candidates was a very complex procedure and
it was never made public. There was utmost secrecy in the marking procedure. As
per rules, each year, one of the IITs is in charge of conducting the
examination.
After Kumar
was provided the list of all candidates who had cleared the examination of
2006, he analysed the marks of 32,000 candidates and was shocked to find that
there was discrepancy in the cut-off marks. It showed that his son Sanchit and
993 others were wrongly excluded from being called for the next round which is
called ’counselling’. The information also revealed that sons and daughters of
IIT professors are almost always selected. Armed with this information he
approached the Kolkata High Court but the judge did not allow the petition. The
Supreme Court too dismissed his appeal regarding his son’s case. It however
stated in its recent judgment that: Excerpts from Supreme Court Judgment
[(2012) 1 SCC 157] “... the action taken by the appellants in challenging the
procedure for JEE 2006, their attempts to bring in transparency in the
procedure by various RTI applications, and the debate generated by the several
views of experts during the course of the writ proceedings, have helped in
making the merit ranking process more transparent and accurate... IITs and the
candidates who now participate in the examinations must, to a certain extent,
thank appellants for their effort in bringing such transparency and accuracy in
the ranking procedure. ...have to be satisfied in being one of the many unsung
heroes who helped in improving the system.”
For Prof
Rajeev Kumar, the story is far from over. More than 20 appeals/complaints are
pending with the CIC against deemed refusal of information and submitting
false/irrelevant/misleading information. His aim is complete cleansing of the
irregularities and corruption in IITs. Too Utopian ?
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