Bhopal:
10 days after NDTV’s investigation exposed serious irregularities in B.Ed colleges affiliated with Barkatullah University, the Union Ministry of Education has initiated a high-level inquiry, directed the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) to verify the allegations, and constituted an independent fact-finding committee.
On July 8, NDTV’s ground investigation revealed that Shri Ram College, which official records showed had been admitting nearly 150 B.Ed and B.Sc-B.Ed students annually for almost a decade, could not be found at its declared address in Mugaliya Kot on Bhopal’s Vidisha Road.
At the site linked to the college, NDTV found what appeared to be agricultural land, while nearby buildings bore the names of other institutions. The investigation also uncovered colleges operating from addresses different from those in official records, inadequate infrastructure, and multiple institutions linked to the same or overlapping premises.
Following the report, the Ministry of Education directed the NCTE on July 15 to submit an urgent factual verification report. It also constituted an independent committee headed by a former Vice-Chancellor, with representatives from the Ministry, the UGC and the Madhya Pradesh government. The team reached Bhopal on July 17 and began physical verification using geo-tagging, videography and photography.
The preliminary review has already widened the scope of the investigation. Apart from the three institutions highlighted by NDTV, officials found that another college was operating from the same premises, taking the total number of institutions under inspection to four. The Ministry has termed the matter a serious lapse and said strict punitive action would follow a comprehensive 360-degree review.
Higher Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar had told NDTV that the university had identified deficiencies in some colleges and that fresh verification had been ordered. Defending the decision to allow colleges to participate in the admission process on the basis of affidavits, he said the move was necessary to complete affiliations within the admission deadline and protect students’ interests. The minister maintained that action would be taken wherever information submitted through affidavits was found to be false or deficient.
However, the Centre’s intervention also raises a larger question. Madhya Pradesh has more than 600 teacher-training institutions and over 58,000 B.Ed seats, yet the present inspection is confined to just four colleges that came under scrutiny following the NDTV investigation.
If missing institutions, changed addresses, overlapping campuses and infrastructure deficiencies could remain undetected for years, should the inquiry not be expanded into a statewide physical audit of all teacher-training colleges rather than remain limited to a handful of institutions?
The issue is no longer confined to four colleges. It concerns the regulatory system that allowed admissions, examinations and degrees to continue despite serious questions over whether some institutions were even functioning at their officially declared addresses.
