Bengal mantri in row for thesis plagiarism

KOLKATA: For West Bengal education minister and Trinamool heavyweight Partha Chatterjee, the looming poll battle just got tougher. Apart from fending off political barbs, he now has to battle allegations of plagiarism in his 2014 PhD thesis.

While Chatterjee refused to comment on the allegations, his aides questioned the timing and motive of the charges, and questioned whether no attribution of academic sources is akin to plagiarism.

Chatterjee started his PhD thesis in 2009, when he was the opposition leader.But as UGC changed its PhD norms, he had to restart it in 2011. By then, he was a minis ter. In 2014, he obtained his PhD from North Bengal University (NBU). After Chatterjee's PhD, his supervisor Anil Bhuimali was made VC of Raigunj University in 2015.Chatterjee was by then in charge of Bikash Bhawan.

Senior Con gress member Arunava Ghosh defended making the allegations now. He said he had asked his daughter Aatreyee, a JNU PhD scholar, and her friends to delve in to Chatterjee's thesis.

Aatreyee said, “We found no citations (in the research). We checked his thesis with a plagiarism software and it revealed that 59-79% of the work was plagiarised. Some chapters had over 80% matter belonging to others.“