Delhi Univeristy professor appointed Pondicherry varsity V-C

The announcement comes almost a year-and-a-half after the government sacked Chandra Krishnamurthy from the post for committing academic fraud.

The HRD Ministry on Friday appointed Gurmeet Singh, a professor of chemistry at Delhi University (DU), as the new head of Pondicherry University for a term of five years. The announcement comes almost a year-and-a-half after the government sacked Chandra Krishnamurthy from the post for committing academic fraud.

Krishnamurthy was the institution’s first female vice-chancellor and the second central university head to be fired by the government ever, after Sushanta Dattagupta of Vishva Bharati.

A probe instituted against her by the HRD Ministry had found that Krishnamurthy had authored only one book against the claim of three in her curriculum vitae and that she lied about guiding nine PhD students and receiving four research projects. The probe also could not find any evidence to prove she held the rank of a professor before becoming Pondicherry University V-C.

Singh has been a teacher with DU’s department of chemistry for over four decades. He has co-authored over 20 papers in peer reviewed journals.

He was the university proctor from 2005 to 2010 during Deepak Pental’s term as vice-chancellor. In 2009, Singh had made headlines as DU proctor after he disqualified most of the candidates fielded by the student wings of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the DUSU elections for breaching the poll code of conduct. That year, an independent candidate was elected as DU’s student union president, for the first time in 18 years.

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