Court: College can’t stop thesis submission

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has directed a college to sign the medical thesis of a researcher/teacher and allow it to be submitted to the appropriate authority even if there is a complaint against the applicant regarding the thesis being plagiarised. The court held that it was the job of the appropriate authority and not the college to decide whether a thesis is original or copied from other sources.

The petitioner, a teacher in a medical college had approached the court seeking directions to the college to sign the thesis, which the college was refusing to do for some time.

A division bench of justices Bhushan Gavai and Bharati Dangre was hearing a writ petition filed by an assistant professor and researcher from Miraj Government Hospital who complained that the dean was unwilling to sign his thesis on the grounds that a complaint against him was pending before the Ethics Committee.  He also informed the court that though the Maharashtra University for Health Sciences had directed the dean to do the needful, the dean had declined to do so.