Chandigarh, June 20
Suspended Panjab University teacher Manoj Sharma will face another inquiry to be conducted by a retired judge of the Punjab and Haryana High court in the question paper writing case.
Sharma, a Reader at the University Business School, was chargesheeted and suspended last year for “helping” an official question paper setter in writing a question paper.
Facing charges of serious misconduct, Sharma’s chargesheet points out that Bhushan Goel, an employee of the Punjab Agro Industries Corporation, was the official paper setter for a subject in MBA and was required to prepare the question paper himself maintaining complete confidentiality. Instead, he got the paper set by Sharma, who wrote the question paper in his own hand knowing that his own students will be appearing in the subject.
A preliminary inquiry conducted by Varinder Kumar, a former Head of the Department of Laws, gave a virtual clean chit to Sharma taking into account Bhushan Goel’s plea that Sharma merely “wrote down” the paper. Goel claimed that he had prepared the question paper but requested Sharma to write it down as his own hand was injured.
His report concluded that since no actual leakage of the question paper took place, the act of Sharma helping someone on preparing the question paper is at the most an act of indiscretion.
The report submitted before the Senate came up for scathing criticism before it was rejected following which a high-powered committee was asked to conduct another inquiry. The committee under the chairmanship of former Dean University Instructions, Prof Veer Singh found Sharma guilty of serious misconduct.
They concluded that Sharma had failed to maintain absolute integrity. The report also concluded that Bhushan Goel has committed serious breach of trust in taking outside help in setting the paper. The report pointed out that Bhushan Goel has not placed any medical certificate to prove that his hand was injured and even if it was he should have refused the assignment given by the university.
“Misconduct committed by Sharma is deliberate and he cannot take defence of merely providing clerical assistance to the paper setter. Moreover, he is a teacher in the UBS and the examinees were students of the UBS. His writing the paper leads to the influence of possibility of leakage of the paper to UBS students,” noted the report.
Interestingly, the university’s legal retainer Anupam Gupta, whose opinion was sought in the matter, rejected both the inquiry reports. “The earlier inquiry officer Prof Varinder Kumar clearly exceeded his jurisdiction in rendering his report. The report travels far beyond the scope of the inquiry which was fairly narrow and makes rather curious reading” he wrote.
With regard to the Veer Singh report, he opined, “The report of the high-powered committee, regardless of its merits, is in violation of the principles of natural justice since neither Dr Manoj Sharma nor Bhushan Goel were heard by the committee.”
The conclusions of the high-powered committee report were placed before the syndicate and Sharma was suspended and chargesheeted. “Now Sharma has asked for certain documents before filing his reply to the charge sheet.
The reply and the chargesheet will be given to the inquiry officer, a retired judge, who has been selected from a panel of judges suggested by the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court,” said Prof Sobti.
