Gujarat: PAC recommends agriculture dept to complete anti-plagiarism policy in 3 months, develop software in a year

The PAC, headed by former minister and senior BJP legislator Jitendra Vaghani, tabled its fifth report before Gujarat Assembly on September 10.

In the report, the PAC has referred to the 2018-19 report of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

The CAG report, among other things, discussed an interactive meet of librarians of agricultural universities during which it was decided that all the universities would install anti-plagiarism software to check the thesis before submission.

Referring to this, the PAC stated in its report that in the meeting of librarians of agriculture universities, it was decided that all the universities will install anti-plagiarism software to assess the thesis. And in that regard, the University Grants Commission (UGC) had also issued a notification. It noted in the report that despite all universities passing a resolution, the universities had not developed any policy or software.

The report also noted a written reply from the Department of Agriculture, Farmers’ Welfare and Cooperation which stated that it had passed a resolution to form a committee for the implementation of anti-plagiarism software. The Committee had also given a report while making some changes to the guidelines issued by the UGC. It further stated that a discussion in that regard was also done in the meeting of Vice Chancellors of state agriculture universities in 2020 and another committee was also formed. Also, by coordinating with INFLIBNET, Gandhinagar User Ids were also made for more than 200 post graduate faculties, it added.

The department also informed the PAC that for the post-graduate research programmes, a committee takes care of research duplication of the synopsis. And after that, the synopsis goes to the office of Director of Research for scrutiny and permission. And the thesis is written after completion of the research following which it goes to experts for checking. The report stated that a check against duplication is done at multiple stages.

The PAC report stated that the representative of the department did not give any reason for delay. “When asked again about it, the department informed that the anti-plagiarism policy was formed in 2021 and instruction to use software of INFLIBNET was given recently,” the report read.

Thus, as per the report, the Committee took note of the department’s inability to explain the delay in forming policy related to plagiarism and recommended to complete the policy to prevent and check plagiarism in three months and to develop an appropriate software to apply to the research papers and thesis with an objective that factual researches are being done and quality research papers and thesis are being published.

Agriculture minister Raghavji Patel could not be reached for comments over the issue despite repeated attempts.

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