FALL OF A 'VICE' CHANCELLOR

UTTAR PRADESH

- Prashant Srivastava

It’s unusual for universities to be considered playgrounds of the power elite, but one vice-chancellor in Uttar Pradesh had managed to do exactly that in the past decade and a half. Vinay Kumar Pathak, 53, the V-C of the Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University in Kanpur, whose misdeeds are now under the scanner of the UP police, held the chair in different universities for almost 13 years.

The man himself has gone AWOL but the FIR against him lists a number of charges, including bribery, corruption, illegal confinement and extortion. Apart from this, there is a pending investigation from back in 2018 on charges levelled by a University Grants Commission (UGC) member referring to “plagiarism and misrepresentation of facts” in his CV. One of the charges is that his profile claimed he had been elevated as a professor in January 2006 at the Harcourt Butler Technical Institute in Kanpur, while in reality the promotion came a year later, in January 2007. On November 12, the Allahabad High Court rejected a petition filed by him to quash the FIR. The STF (special task force) investigating the case has got a lookout notice out for the V-C.