Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister’s Additional Private Secretary Ratheesh Kaliyadan obtained his PhD degree in violation of University Grants Commission (UGC) provisions and committed “most serious” plagiarism while submitting his doctoral thesis, it’s been alleged.

Ratheesh is facing charges of ‘Level 3’ plagiarism, which refers to copying over 60 per cent of the thesis from elsewhere. If the University confirms such a charge, the rules stipulate that the thesis should be withdrawn and the culprit should be ousted from teaching assignments if they have any.

The researcher himself had given an affidavit stating that he had prepared the thesis and committed no plagiarism. Hence, if found guilty of plagiarism charges, the University can initiate legal proceedings against him.

While Ratheesh cites that experts at Assam University had gone through his thesis in detail and approved the same in unison, there is no clear reply to the charges that he had copied a major portion from the thesis that his friend R V Rajesh had submitted at the University of Mysore to obtain a PhD degree.

The Kerala Students Union, the students’ union wing of Congress, and the Save University Campaign Committee allege that an examination with the software, approved by the UGC, revealed 62% to 95% plagiarism in five chapters of the thesis submitted by Ratheesh. Even the charts and layouts were copied and spelling mistakes got repeated, they pointed out.

While the research topic of Rajesh was ‘A study on the effectiveness of the critical pedagogical approach in social studies at Kerala’s Secondary level Education’, he had chosen ‘Impact of media study method in Kerala’s Higher Secondary Education’ as his topic.

KSU State President Aloysius Xavier has written to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, seeking immediate interference in the PhD row involving Ratheesh.

Old contact under scanner

How Ratheesh managed to blatantly copy? Did any university officials help him? All that we know is that Prof K V Nagarajan was the Research Guide to Ratheesh at the Mysore varsity. The former was deputed several times as Examiner for viva voce examination in universities including Kottayam-based Mahatma Gandhi University while serving at Mysore. Incidentally, Ratheesh was a student of Mahatma Gandhi University.

When Prof Nagarajan was appointed as the Pro-Vice Chancellor of Assam University, Ratheesh, who was working as a teacher at the Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Thalassery, registered there for research.

Deliberate campaign to malign me: Ratheesh 

Meanwhile, Ratheesh rejected the charges of plagiarism and termed them as “blatant lies aimed at maligning him”. In his social media post, Ratheesh, the former Executive Director of SCOLE Kerala, the state’s Open School system, and an Educational Expert at the Public Education Rejuvenation Campaign (Kerala Education Mission), also said he was not an academic adviser of the Chief Minister as several reports had mentioned.