JNU Professor Says Any Committee Probing NTA Must Also Examine Role Of UGC Chief (Photo @mamidala90)
After the NTA chief was removed amid the ongoing row over the NEET and UGC NET exam irregularities, Jawahar Lal University Professor Ayesha Kidwai shared a Facebook post on Monday demanding an inquiry not only into all aspects of the NTA but also into the role of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and its chief, Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar. She also alleged a UGC-NTA nexus while demanding a comprehensive probe into the government statutory body.
“In the last post I made, we saw that the although the NTA has been allowed to use the Govt of India emblem, it is a private body/society (see registration certificate in the screenshot again) and all government departments and other bodies are advised by the Registrar of Societies to make “necessary verification (on their own) of its assets and liabilities before entering into any contract/assignment with them,” the professor wrote regarding her article on the allegations about the NTA.
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“This should get us all to thinking about how the various bodies that the NTA conducts exams for actually entered into this contractual relationship with it every year for the last two years. Do they do their due diligence regarding its assets (which remain mysteriously not in the public domain), is a contract renewed/signed every year, and prior to that, is this decision passed by the statutory authority of the institution?, ” she wrote, adding that the reason why she ask the question is that they have learned from the JNU that the institutions admission process was was destroyed by the then-Vice Chancellor, who is currently heading the UGC.
The professor alleged that very little of due process was observed during the admission process.
Citing an RTI report collected by her collegue, current president of the JNUTA, Moushumi Basu, Ayesha Kidwai wrote that you can can read a narrative of the egregious violations that took place in the [second] screenshot, extracted from a press note that the JNUTA issued on March 1, 2021, sharing the screenshot of the report.
The professor then alleged that the NTA was imposed on the JNU by the Jagadesh Kumar in his capacity as the vice chancellor by violating “every ounce of its statutory procedure” and despite the conflict of interest as he was also a serving Governing Body member of the NTA!
No memorandum of understanding (MoU) or contract seemed to have been signed between JNU and the NTA, and even the exact sum that the NTA charged JNU to conduct the asinine examination is not known, the professor stated, adding that all that JNU gained was a shortfall in revenues and significant losses in the diversity and quality of students.
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Ayesha Kidwai further pointed out that the NTA had advantage in the process besides the experience and the prestige, while Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar was immediately rewarded upon the completion of his term in JNU “(one marked by orchestrated violence against students and teachers, and terrible maladministration) with the UGC chairpersonship.”
Pointing that the UGC notified the CUET-UG as the national entrance examination in less than two months of assuming office as the body’s chairperson, the professor asked, “So how exactly did this decision come to be made inside the UGC in the five to six weeks since Mamidala first arrived? Did the UGC commission have a meeting to discuss discuss how to implement the NEP proposals for an NTA-devised-and-administered common entrance test? Did such a meeting verify the NTA’s credentials and protocols before writing the March 21 letter to the universities?”
Claiming that even though she spend hours trawling through the minutes of Commission meetings that are available on the UGC site, she said she was “utterly shocked” to find that there was no discussion about the NTA and CUET-UG. She also noted that there were two meetings of the Commission, held in February and in March.
The professor added that out of curiosity, she first went back to see whether this was an earlier decision that Jagadesh Kumar was merely implementing, but that is not so. “In subsequent meetings too, there is no vetting of the NTA, no guidelines are ever issued to it about selection of experts or centres, there is no mention of a contract, no discussion of its assets or liabilities. Instead, the UGC merely records its appreciation for the NTA on September 22 in ‘Any other item’, which we from JNU know is the preferred locus for MJK to record all diktats.” she wrote.
The JNU professor further wrote that the full UGC Commission does not ever discuss the suitability of NTA as a vendor or its performance for the CUETs or UGC-NET examinations in the “minutes after boring Minutes.” “In fact even the meeting that declares the UGC-NET as the PhD entrance examination does not record the decision as having been made by the Commission, but merely as a ratification of the action already taken (Again, very familiar to JNU peeps who continue to suffer the effects of Jaggu’s ATR long after the action has shifted to the UGC)!” she added.
Urging the readers to look at the screenshots that she shared along with the post, Ayesha Kidwai points that the 578th meeting was attended by “just four members of the full commission, plus two special invitees.”
“The NTA would not have become the giant cesspool that it has without the UGC CETs. The UGC would not have become the septic tank it is without Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar taking over the institution,” the professor stated, while reiterating that any committee looking into the NTA must also examine the role of Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar “and his UGC.”
