NU forced to give detailed RTI information on probe panels

Times of India: Nagpur: Sunday, March 11, 2018.

Nagpur University was forced to provide detailed reply to an RTI query after TOI, on February 18, published a report on how its Establishment Section failed to provide proper information on number of inquiry committees set up by it in last decade.

Senior activist Abhay Kolarkar had sought information pertaining to inquiry panels constituted by NU and its statutory bodies from January 1, 2008 to November 30, 2017.

However, as per its perennial habit of not providing complete information and even harassing the RTI activists at times by directing their queries from one section to another, this time too, it gave irrelevant and confusing data.

The earlier reply by public information officer Maroti Borkar informed that NU appointed inquiry committees in just three cases and started departmental probe into two other. He, however, failed to mention names of the panels and officials, who are either dismissed or suspended. Even the other information was confusing, inconsistent and vague.

After TOI report, the NU officials called on Kolarkar and personally handover copy of reply which had much details. This time, NU informed about seven cases, dates on which probe panels were constituted, and action taken on its officials/teachers. Of the seven cases, four are exposed by TOI and only after its series of reports that NU was compelled to constitute inquiry panels.

It included Kohchade style revaluation/retotalling scam involving then assistant registrar Sandhya Chunodkar Handa, mental harassment of girls by Physics department senior lecturer SS Bhoga, and large-scale irregularities in NU’s Barrister SK Wankhede College of Education by ex-principal Vandana Manapure.

In all these cases, NU found accused guilty and dismissed Handa and Manapure while stopped Bhoga’s two increments. Even alleged case of sexual harassment at NU’s Dr Ambedkar Law College was exposed by TOI, but later both teacher and survivor mutually resolved the issue.

In other cases, NU suspended then head of Mass Communication Department DD Dhawankar in 2006, but reinstated him on January 28, 2011, after another panel granted him clean chit. In administrative irregularities in Rajiv Gandhi Biotechnology Centre, it suspended associate professor Sunil Pande on June 7, 2016, and departmental inquiry report is awaited. Only in the complaints by research students against a Botony lecturer, he was found not guilty and issue was closed, NU sources informed.