PhD test score valid for 3 yrs, decides Syndicate

Amarjot Kaur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, June 1

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Taking into consideration the recommendations of a 15-member committee at Panjab University, the Syndicate has favoured framing official rules and regulations for MPhil/PhD in accordance with the UGC minimum standards.

Previously valid for two years and then extended to five years in 2018, PU entrance test’s qualifying score for admission in the said courses will be valid for three years now. The panel, however, had recommended lifetime validity for the PU entrance test score.

While GATE qualifying score will be considered as the basic criteria for admission in MPhil/PhD courses, any national-level test for admission to MPhil/PhD will have a lifetime validity as will GATE and GPAT. Earlier, a student was required to take admission in PhD programme within five years of clearing the said entrance exams.

The new rules and regulations will be published in the prospectus as official guidelines for the MPhil/PhD courses in the upcoming academic session.

PU’s persons with disability (PwD) had earlier expressed their concern over ‘special admission drive’ in MPhil or PhD courses as per the 2016 UGC regulations, which were amended last year. The panel endorsed their demand and it has now been accepted by the Syndicate.

In November 2018, PU Prof Akshaya Kumar of the Department of English and Cultural Studies had proposed certain alterations in the research requirements of PhD/MPhil encouraging the translation of text with an extended scholarly and critical introduction to meet the partial requirements of the two programmes. The committee and the Syndicate have resolved to accept his proposal only for MPhil course as a pilot project for five years.

The Syndicate struck down the proposal stating that “while issuing certificate regarding plagiarism for PhD thesis, the supervisor of the student would manually subtract the similarity percentage from own papers of the student from overall similarity percentage and give certificate of remaining similarity and that it be countersigned by the chairperson, post which it should be accepted by the secrecy branch. This should be circulated to all the departments by the office of Dean Research immediately after the approval of PU VC.”

Relaxation in norms

The UGC notification, dated August 27, 2018, laid down minimum standards and procedure for awarding MPhil/PhD degrees providing a relaxation of five per cent marks (from 50 per cent to 45 per cent) for candidates belonging to SC/ST/OBC (non-creamy layers)/differently abled category in the entrance examination conducted by universities. It was stated that if in spite of the above relaxation, the seats for these categories remain unfilled, the universities shall launch a ‘special admission drive’ for that particular category within a month from the date of closure of admissions under the general category. The university concerned will devise its own admission procedure, along with eligibility conditions to ensure that most of the seats under these categories are filled. 

Rules for guides

In view of the April 2019 case wherein a co-supervisor and a research scholar of the Dept of Environment Studies were found to be relatives,  the committee did not approve of guideship within blood relations. For long an unwritten rule, it had then resolved that no faculty member could become guide of a candidate with whom he/she had blood ties. The Syndicate gave its nod to this regulation.