Names of deceased, former professors listed as current employees in Savitribai Phule Pune University’s NIRF 2025 data

NIRF 2025 rankings are based on data for the academic year 2023-24. The data submission window opened at the end of 2024 and closed in early 2025. Late Professor Deshmukh, who taught at SPPU’s Department of Lifelong Learning and Extension, passed away two years ago. In the column ‘Currently working with institution?’, SPPU has responded with a ‘Yes’ against Professor Deshmukh’s name, months after his passing.

In fact, SPPU has claimed that all but one of the 653 professors listed in its submission are still employees of the university, and has not provided leaving dates for any of them. Thirty-nine names listed as ‘regular’ professors in the data are over the mandatory retirement age of 60. Some of them still hold Emeritus or Chair Professor positions at SPPU, but The Indian Express has verified that many others on the list do not hold any such position.

Names include heads of other academic bodies

Professor Sanjeev Sonawane, who is the first professor listed in SPPU’s data, took charge of the post of Vice-Chancellor of Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University in May 2023. Accordingly, he retired from his position at SPPU before taking charge of his new role. However, he too has been marked by SPPU as ‘currently working with institution’. Professor Sonawane confirmed to The Indian Express that he was no longer employed by the university in any role.

Two other professors who are mentioned as current employees, Mohan Kulkarni (retired in 2020) and Mangesh Kulkarni (retired in 2023), also confirmed to The Indian Express that they were no longer associated with the varsity. Professor Anirban Dash, who currently serves as the Director of the National Mission for Manuscripts and had left SPPU years ago, is also listed as a current employee.

The university has given a leaving date only for Professor Santishree Pandit, who took over as Vice-Chancellor of Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2022.

The Indian Express compared SPPU’s data with the data submitted by another top university – IIT Kanpur – which clearly mentions the leaving dates of 17 faculty members who have left the university or retired in AY 2023-24 or in the ensuing time period in 2024, before the data was submitted to the NIRF.

In more apparent errors, the qualifications of multiple professors have been erroneously listed. For example, the qualifications of Professor Milind Sardesai (Head of Botany Department) and Professor Shantanu Ozarkar (Head of Anthropology Department) have been wrongly mentioned as NET (National Eligibility Test) instead of PhD.

Professor Vinayak Joshi, head of the SPPU Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) which is responsible for compilation of NIRF data, directed The Indian Express to Vice-Chancellor Suresh Gosavi for comments on the matter. Despite repeated requests, Gosavi did not share his response to questions regarding errors in the data.

Faculty count weightage in NIRF

NIRF was started in 2016 by the Ministry of Education under the Government of India to rank institutions across the country. Teaching, learning and resources (TLR) is one of the five parameters that NIRF judges institutions on. Within this parameter, ‘Faculty-Student Ratio with emphasis on permanent faculty’ carries 30 marks, and counts ‘Full-time regular faculty’. It also counts faculty engaged on a contract or ad hoc basis if the concerned faculty has taught in both semesters of the academic year.

In 2025, SPPU stood had the 91st rank in the NIRF ‘Overall’ category, a sharp drop from the previous year when it stood at 37. This drop in ranking was led by a big drop in the TLR parameter from 61.07 in 2024 to 51.46 in 2025.

Reacting to the errors in SPPU’s data, the head of a department at the university told The Indian Express, “Robust data is a prerequisite for data-driven policy. Institutional rankings are a tool for prospective students and stakeholders as they evaluate their options. SPPU, being a state university, should have been careful with its own data as prospective students will invest their time and resources in obtaining education from here. An inflated faculty-student ratio will result in disappointment for students and their employers. This, in turn, will further dent the public perception.”

“As an institution which bears the motto ‘Yah kriyawan sa panditah (A learned person is one who is ceaselessly active)’, SPPU needs to complement its academic excellence with integrity in action,” the professor added.