Doctorate annulled for plagiarism By: B V Shiva Shankar Date: 2011-03-08 Former member of academic council plans to appeal to the government to initiate criminal action against guide and student who prepared the thesis In a first ever, the High Court has ordered annulment of a PhD awarded for a doctoral thesis on grounds of plagiarism. Hearing a PIL, a two-member bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice J S Kehar, and Justice A S Boppanna ordered annulling the resolution of the Bangalore University Syndicate for awarding a PhD for a thesis submitted by Venkataramanappa in 2003. It's a steal: Apart from content, pictures were used from books penned by Mylarappa's in Venkataramanappa's thesis MiD DAY had earlier carried a series of reports exposing the plagiarism along with copies of pages of the thesis, which were verbatim copy of the books Gramina Baduku and Krishi Karmikaru authored by B C Mylarappa. Content, apart from pictures were used in the thesis submitted by Venkataramanappa. Following the PhD being awarded to Venkataraman-appa, L Vasudeva Murthy, then member of the academic council, petitioned Governor T N Chaturvedi to cancel the plagiarised thesis. In 2007, Chaturvedi constituted an enquiry committee that confirmed that the content was indeed plagiarised. However, the government did not act on the governor's directions to annul the thesis, following which Murthy moved the High Court with the PIL. "It is a victory and truth prevailed after a long drawn out legal battle. I am happy that the court upheld my objections," said Murthy. Mylarappa, whose books were plagiarized, had allegedly allowed Venkataramanappa to use content from his books, since in order to be eligible for professorship as per the rules, he had to be guided by a PhD. Murthy added that he would appeal to the government to initiate criminal action against Mylarappa and Venkataramanappa, as according to the court this was a case of fraud. While Mylarappa declined to comment on the issue, Venkataramanappa remained unavailable for comment. http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/mar/080311-News-Bangalore-academic-council-... Mangesh Ghodke Sr. Librarian, L&T Infotech Ltd., Mumbai. Tel.: 022-67953011 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.