Junior lecturers dismissed: 35 removed from service over forged certificates

Hyderabad: The Telangana Board of Intermediate Education has dismissed 35 junior lecturers from government service after universities confirmed that the certificates they had submitted were forged. The department sent each lecturer an individual notice informing them of their removal.

All 35 had earlier served as contract lecturers and were later regularised. Contract lecturers have been appointed in the state for nearly two decades to teach Intermediate students, and the certificates submitted during these appointments were verified on several occasions, after which many of them were regularised.

Doubts later arose over the genuineness of certificates submitted by some lecturers, prompting officials to send the documents to the respective universities for verification. After the universities confirmed the certificates were forged, the department issued show-cause notices to the lecturers concerned before going ahead with their removal.

The action has raised questions over the earlier verification process. Inter Education JAC Chairman Dr. P. Madhusudhan Reddy demanded action against officials who had previously certified the disputed documents as genuine, and called for CBCID and Vigilance investigations into the fake certificate issue, including how the certificates were accepted during earlier checks.

Certificates of 320 more lecturers under scrutiny

The matter may not end with the 35 dismissals. Authorities reportedly have doubts over the certificates of another 320 lecturers across the state, many of them issued by universities located in other states.

Certificates from Madurai Kamaraj University, Annamalai University, Ranchi University, Bundelkhand University and Lalit Narayan University are among those under examination. Authorities are sending these documents to the respective universities to establish whether they are genuine, and the outcome of these verifications is not yet known.