JNU professor faces accusations of plagiarism

New Delhi: An MPhil dissertation of Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Union (JNUTA) general Secretary Sudhir Kumar Suthar was reportedly was found to have been copied from various sources, an online tool for detection of plagiarism, Turnitin, has reportedly detected.

Sources said that Suthar’s dissertation, titled ‘Political Parties and Party System in Russian Democracy’, has a number of paragraphs copied verbatim from “widely read textbooks of political science such as Andrew Heywood’s Politics book”.

To cite an instance, a paragraph on page number 18 of his dissertation speaks about the term cadre, which seems to be copied verbatim from the book.

Similarly, several paragraphs on different pages of the dissertation are reportedly copied from the same book.

These allegations of plagiarism come in the wake several other teachers being accused of the academic plagiarism.

The univertsity students had alleged that at least five of the new faculty members appointed by the selection committee were guilty of copyig the work of foreign scholars for their doctoral and MPhil dissertations.

These allegations come at a time when the critics have accused the universituy vice-chancellor and the Union ministry of human resource development (HRD) of upending established procedures to install academics friendly to the Centre.

Last year, another professor was accused of plagiarising an online literature work in Turkish language and publishing the same in the year 2012 with a new title.

The matter was also taken to the Delhi high court where the petitioners had sought directions to constitute a high-level panel for fixing responsibilities of the plagiarism committed by the assistant professor.