Vinay Kumar Pathak, Vice Chancellor of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University in Lucknow
A research paper authored in 2010 by Vinay Kumar Pathak, Vice Chancellor of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University in Lucknow, has significant sections which match another paper published in a foreign journal in 2007.
This alleged plagiarism was reported after a former University Grant Commission (UGC) member, Dharmendra Yadav, sought Pathak’s CV, which was used to apply for the post of VC, under the Right to Information.
According to the RTI response from the Uttar Pradesh Governor’s Secretariat, Pathak’s CV mentions he was the sole author of 11 papers.
The papers listed under an annexure of the CV include one titled, “Clinical Gait Data Analysis based on Spatio-Temporal features”, which is allegedly plagiarised from a 2007 research paper published by Heba Lakany from University of Essex, UK, titled, “Extracting A Diagnostic Gait Signature”.
Citing the RTI response, Swaraj India chief, Yogendra Yadav has lodged a complaint with UP Additional Chief Secretary Sanjay Agarwal about “a shocking instance of plagiarism” and sought an inquiry.
“This instance pertains to Prof Vinay Kumar Pathak, Vice-Chancellor, Dr APJAKTU, Lucknow. He along with some of his students has been repeatedly involved in brazen acts of plagiarism that violate academic norms, UGC regulations and the copyright laws of our country,” Yadav’s complaint stated.
According to Yadav, Pathak and his PhD student Rohit Katiyar published a research paper in an international journal. “The above cited research paper is the plagiaristic copy (100% copied except title) of a paper published in the year 2007,” the complaint said.
When contacted, Pathak said the CV was not genuine and that he never published such a paper.
“I would like to request you to check the original CV I submitted at the Governor House. The CV is not authentic and some people are fabricating all this against me,” he said.
“I found out about the plagiarised journal recently. I contacted the publisher to verify whether my name was mentioned there in the journal. And, the publisher replied that my name was not there but it was authored by Rohit Katiyar, who was a student under me at Harcourt Butler Technological Institute (HBTI), Kanpur. I was then a Dean at HBTI.”
According to Katiyar, he had apologised to Pathak and got the papers removed. “It was my mistake and I published these plagiarised papers with Vinay Pathak’s name without his consent,” he said.
“It was all a mistake from my side and I even gave a written apology to (Pathak) Sir in the regard. The time when the paper was published (in 2010), Sir had left for Uttarakhand. His name was written by me in the papers without his consent,” said Katiyar.