THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The one-member inquiry committee of Kerala University Pro Vice-Chancellor J Prabhash, which inquired into the allegations that the university’s former Registrar K A Hashim had manipulated his biodata, has found that there are discrepancies in certain entries in it.The biodata was submitted along with the project proposals sent to various funding agencies while he was the Registrar of the university. The inquiry was ordered by the university on October 25, 2010, on the basis of an adjournment motion moved on August 20, 2010 by K L Vivekanandan. Hashim, in all the three biodatas submitted by him, had written against the column of academic qualifications, ‘MSc and MPhil, PhD thesis synopsis submitted’. Hashim had told the inquiry committee that he had only meant that he had submitted a synopsis of the topic of his research along with the application for PhD registration. However, this could hardly be considered a valid explanation as in academic parlance, this actually meant submission of synopsis as a prelude to the final submission of the thesis itself. Stated differently, using the words, ‘PhD thesis synopsis submitted’ convey the impression that the submission of the thesis is imminent, which was not true in the case of Hashim, particularly at the time when he had submitted the research proposal in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The report pointed out that a comparison of the publications in the biodata and those in the list Hashim presented revealed that they were at odds with each other. For example, the articles included in the biodata were published 2004 and 2008. However, those in the list were published in the calendar year 2009. Six out of the nine articles in the biodata have not at all been included in the list. With regard to the rest, though their titles are the same, the name of the journal in which they were published and the year of the publication were different. This leads one to the conclusion that at the time of the submission of the research projects in question, Hashim did not have any publications to his credit, the report said. The report pointed out that the mistakes in the biodata were neither unintentional nor typographical in nature. This is clear from the fact that what happened was not merely spelling mistakes here and there or a few changes/omission in name or titles. As regard to the publications, there is no direct evidence to link Hashim with false entries. At the same time, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence, he could not be absolved of indirect responsibility for the same, the report said.
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