Osmania University paid post-doc fellowship to college teacher for 3 years: RTI

Hyderabad: Serious discrepancies in Osmania University’s functioning, according to information revealed by a set of RTIs has raised questions over the conduct of the university administration.

According to the RTIs, a student of the Public Administration Department applied for post doctoral fellowship to Indian Council of Social Science Research, got it successfully and continued to get the fellowship money for nearly two years (five instalments) even though he was employed whole time.

The post doctoral fellow, who had been working as a junior contract lecturer with government degree college, Malkajgiri from 2006 got a total of Rs 6,76,400 as fellowship from March 8, 2013 to Feb. 7, 2015.

According to the agreement with ICSSR which binds a post doctoral fellow who gets fellowship, he should work on a whole time basis for ICSSR and not receive any financial assistance from any other source during the tenure of fellowship.

However, during the entire tenure the said student was employed as a contract lecturer. It raises doubts as to how he got the required certification from the head of the Department of Public Administration, his supervisor and principal of University College of Arts and Social Sciences stating that he attended the research work ‘regularly’ and his ability and research work is satisfactory.

The university authorities finally withheld the last ins-talment of fellowship after a complaint by G. Ramu, a former Law College student, along with proof which he obtained through RTIs and issued a show cause notice. The university is yet to initiate disciplinary action.