Jammu:Ashok Aima, Vice Chancellor of Central University of Jammu who has always been in news for his wrong doings since his appointment, once again involved in an academically corrupt practice by sending plagiarized Article on "Transformational Epoch of Education in Emerging India: The Policy Analysis" to be published under his name (Prof. Ashok Aima).
Plagiarism is considered to be an academic dishonesty. Plagiarism is not a crime in itself, but just like a counterfeiting fraud can be punished in the court for prejudices caused by copyright infringement, violation of moral rights, or torts. In academia and industry, it is a serious ethical offense. In past, many VCs have been sacked from their posts after being found involved in plagiarism. Prof Ashok Aima, who is alleged to be already involved in many scams, cannot not even write two pages by himself for an article and plagiarized 47% from other sources available in the public domain. How can public expect from him of being honest while performing his duties as a VC when he cannot adhere to his basic duty of being an honest Educationist.
It has been alleged by many insiders that the kind of attitude Prof Aima has towards corruption in his administrative works, the same kind of corruption he carries on into his academic endeavors as well. It will be a no big surprise to find out that Prof Aima following same footsteps for the Ph.D thesis he has guided , Papers Published, Article published and Project reports submitted to different agencies from which millions of rupees have been taken for giving them outcome based results. It has also come to our notice that Prof Aima being an academician, has published numerous research articles and recently one of his paper taken down by the reputed Journal published by IEEE from their website on account of poor academic inputs into the paper. Students who plagiarize face disciplinary action or immediate suspension. But it is highly shameful that those who are responsible for framing policies of plagiarism are themselves caught writing plagiarized articles. What is the punishment and penalty for those who lead Universities. Through reliable sources UNT came to know that the Central University doesn't use any specialized plagiarism detecting software like Turnitin, for screening the similarity index of their Reserach work as they are very well aware that such software will bring forth their academic corruptions. With a view to check plagiarism in higher education, UGC has also notified the Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions Regulations, 2018. The objective of the regulations is to promote academic research and curb plagiarism by developing systems to detect it.
Prof Ashok Aima, VC, CUJ who has been regularly in news since he was appointed VC of CUJ in 2015 for his unethical behavior and corrupt practices and recently for his illegal mansion of 5 crores constructing on Khad land tried to send a message to all media houses that he is a learned academician but instead of writing original article on his own and adhering to his past practices of corruption and unethical behaviour, he copied and pasted the text from other sources and by changing the synonym of words in the article and sent it to all media houses in J&K to publish on 1st, August, 2020 at 8.19 pm from his official email id [email protected] . After Verifying the “originality reports” of the his article generated by “Turnitin” plagiarism check software shows that it has a “similarity index” (the percentage similar to another publication published earlier) of 47 percent and text was copied from three sources. The Report revealed that 34 percent was copied from www.mhrd.gov.in, 13 percent text was taken from www.ntm.org.in and 1 percent from an earlier published paper of IIT.
In a similar incident in past, former Delhi University Vice-Chancellor, Deepak Pental was sent to jail by a city court in a case of alleged plagiarism and forgery. In another case, President of India sacked Pondicherry University Vice Chancellor, Chandra Krishnamurthy, facing allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation and also Adya Prasad Pandey, Vice Chancellor of Manipur University was removed after a probe set up by the ministry found that there was substance in the allegations of administrative and financial “irregularities” made against him. Similarly, there should be indepth enquiry of academic and administrative corruptions by Prof Ashok Aima to bring him to the purview of justice like other corrupt VCs were brought in the past.
It is pertinent to mention here that Prof Ashok Aima, is already in news for illegally making payment of 11 crore to one contractor against the recommendation of University legal counsel, the then Xen and Finance officer of the university to not make the payment and blacklist the company, for the manipulation of teaching roster for appointing his favorite candidates, for not disclosing visitor(President of India) committee report in which committee concluded enquiry initiated against faculty members was a cooked story by him and was a deliberate attempt to harass them, for allocating a project of more than 2 crore to a blue eyed faculty who was rejected by a previous committee and recruited by Prof Ashok Aima, for purchasing sub-standard gym equipment’s, for taking anti-jammu and anti-youth step of stopping job-oriented course to settle his personal score with some staff members and for constructing mansion of 5 crore on khad (land) without building permissions from JMC. Not only these, VC, CUJ also tried to bring down the youth of Jammu by reducing the salary along with degradation of profile from Assistant Professors to Guest Faculty which is against the UGC guidelines and the judgement of Hon'ble Supreme Court of paying equal pay for equal work to the staff members. The designation and salary was reduced from the Assistant Professor from full scale (70000 approx) to Assistant Professor with consolidated salary (40000) and then further reduced to the profile of Resource person on a maximum salary of 30000. The VC doesn't even show any respect for court orders and shows vindictiveness against the employees by holding their salaries, who moved to court to get justice. The VC also attempted to stop the course where faculty went to court by stopping Job-oriented Course of B.Voc Tourism Management.
When Contacted Prof Aima for Comments, instead of being 'Sorry' for plagiarizing the 47% material of Article published under his name from other's work without quoting any source said, "Article is based on various reports and observations and is not a research publication.Please do not use your channel for finding out faults rather than appreciating and commending the efforts of GOI to come up with a historical transformation in education policy you are undermining my efforts" He further said, "Ethical research norms need to be viewed in terms of earning a degree or credits for research publications for career advancements.Free lance writings need to be viewed accordingly. i do not know what is your expertise academically to comment on my understanding being a stringer for a media house".
From last two years many Civil Society and Political organizations demanding for an independent enquiry by CBI for allegations of corruption against Prof Ashok Aima and now renowned academicians are also demanding for an enquiry to check his academic credentials and also the Projects submitted by him to government funding agencies and duping those agencies of crore of rupees in the name of providing quality research which in actual is a copy paste work.