Centre’s turn to defend its officials booked in Bihar

The decision has been taken at the level of the Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar since it has been felt that the officials were booked for implementing orders taken collectively by a wing of the Central Government. A copy of the inquiry report, conducted by an Additional Secretary in the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, was forwarded to the Cabinet Secretary on July 12.

While admitting that the accused officials — mostly belonging to the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) — had erred “technically and legally”, the confidential inquiry report states that no “wrong-doing” was committed by them on the question of extending the period for regularising Bihar’s B.Ed colleges.

Bihar has become the focus of fake degree scams ever since B.Ed colleges in the state turned into fly-by-night operations, charging as much as Rs 2.5 lakh for a single degree.

The NCTE itself was formed in August 1995 and had given six months to the 2,000 B.Ed institutes all over the country to apply for recognition. As it turned out, barely 20 per cent of colleges applied for recognition, resulting in the piquant situation of the rest being threatened with being de-recognised (including the Delhi University).

The NCTE, the Ministry’s inquiry report noted, landed itself in an impasse, where they could not have, legally speaking, allowed the 1,600 institutions to continue even though some of them have have been in existence for more than 40 years. “While technically it may be wrong, in the interest of thousands of students and hundreds of institutions, administratively there was no escape from this decision,” the report states.

The controversy snowballed further and the NCTE, in violation of the advice tendered by the Law Ministry allowed the defaulting institutions to continue to run their courses until their applications for recognition were disposed off. Once the applications for recognition were scrutinised and the facilities at the institutes examined, it was discovered that a majority of the 200-odd B.Ed. colleges were fake and that the burgeoning teacher training industry in Bihar was actually a multi-crore fraud.

HRD Ministry officials say the complaints to the Vigilance Department were filed by some of the colleges which were de-recognised who alleged the complicity of the NCTE officials to allow them to function in an unauthorized manner in violation of Government rules. FIR’s against 26 persons were eventually filed by the state Vigilance Department, naming among others, state Human Resources Minister Jatin Ram Majhi.

On June 1 this year, the plight of the 10 officials was discussed by a Committee of Secretaries in New Delhi, wherein it was decided an internal inquiry should also be conducted. Despite being named in the FIRs, the Central Government officials have been given a clean chit by the HRD Ministry and will have their legal defence paid for by the Central Government.