Taking a serious note of pending vigilance cases with the national teachers’ regulator, NCTE, the HRD Ministry has sought a detailed report from the organisation about status of each case and sought to know as what action it has taken.
Some of the matters are already with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) but in the wake of non-cooperation from National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE), an autonomous body of HRD Ministry, the “reforms and transparency” image, which the regulator has been trying to build for some time seems to have been derailed.
HRD Ministry sources said that one serious case pertains to NCTE Deputy Secretary Dr Anil Shukla, who has had a turbulent career in the organisation ever since he joined as Regional Director, Northern Regional Centre (NRC) in 1996 after being relieved from a Guru Swami Shiksha Samiti, a known right-wing academic institution.
There are also other cases including those of ex-Regional Director, NRC, Jaipur Dr Ram Kishor, who had been repatriated to the parent department and investigations are underway. A vigilance matter relating to former member secretary of NCTE R Jaya has resurfaced, and the matter of rampant misuse of official vehicles, telephones, etc against her, will now be directly investigated by the MHRD CVO.
Due to his alleged dubious distinctions, Shukla was infact repatriated by the NCTE’s first Chairperson Padmashri Prof J S Rajput to his parent department in 1999 but he managed to not only get back to NCTE but placed himself as a permanent Deputy Secretary (DS) even though such a position did not exist within administrative structure.
The biggest irony is that Shukla still continues to hold an important post at NCTE despite being chargesheeted by CBI for not filing mandatory income tax (IT) returns for several years. Another case which the alleged official is facing is a forgery case over degrees about which a vigilance enquiry is still underway, rather very slow due to his pre-occupations in the organisation.
“The Ministry has now taken a serious offence now because the alleged official is also trying to influence through some of the right-wing people, who matter in the governance. But the Minister (Smriti Irani) has clearly instructed us to clean system by ignoring all influences,” said a HRD Ministry official.
Even after NCTE’s concerted efforts to put all its activities in the public domain, cases of corruption in proceedings of application till grant of recognitions, serious vigilance cases has resurfaced raising eyebrows at the highest level of the HRD Ministry, which is attempting to put forth transparency through Digital India initiative. “NCTE has already put GIS on its website for transparency in locating teacher education institutions (TEIs), RTI online, and grievance redressal online. It also has call centre for grievance redressal with a national toll-free number,” added the official.