In a recent crackdown on academic fraud, the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, has identified 21 professors working with the varsity on fake doctorates. During the affiliation process for academic year 2016-17, the university learned that many of its faculty members were fraudulently registered as professors in more than one college at the same time.

Initially, the university had identified eight faculty members who had submitted bogus Ph.D degrees during the affiliation process. Later, the varsity identified 12 more professors. Among them, nine were found to be working in three colleges, seven were part of five colleges and five were registered as professors in four colleges.

These professors had managed to obtain fake doctorates in computer science and engineering, business management, pharmacy and civil engineering. The university has blacklisted 21 professors and is now planning to initiate legal action against them. “It is against the affiliation rules of the university to have registration in more than one college. The professors have been issued show cause notices and the university is in the process to weed out more such professors from private colleges,” said N Yadaiah, registrar of JNTU-H. The university has also uploaded names of all the blacklisted professors on its website.

During last year affiliation process, the JNTU-H had found that a lot of colleges are appointing faculty members and principals with fraudulent degrees from neighbouring states. This year, the university tightened its norms and urged all the engineering colleges to upload credentials of its faculty members along with PAN details, registration ID, etc, which helped the university stumble upon the names of faculty members enrolled as professors in more than one college at the same time.