Ranchi, Nov. 26: Somebody will be watching you…somebody will be watching you… This is not the catchline of the Season 3 of Bigg Boss, rather, a warning for the PhD students of Ranchi University (RU).

From now onwards, there will be a third eye keeping a tab on their academic activities on the campus. In an effort to check plagiarism and to promote quality, RU has decided to install cameras in the rooms of the deans, which will capture the different processes that go into attaining a PhD degree by students.

RU has built rooms for the four deans of different faculties of studies/subjects in the posh multi-storeyed office on the Ranchi College campus.

With the help of the cameras, different processes like pre-registration seminar, pre-submission of PhD thesis, final viva-voce will be videographed and saved in a compact disc.

The video discs will be deposited, along with the sets of PhD thesis of prospective candidates to ensure that the authorities can go through the proceedings and check whether everything has been done in accordance or not.

Earlier, Departmental Research Council (DRC) of each post-graduate subject used to conduct the Phd process at its whims, thus leading to many cases of forged PhD degrees and plagiarism of single work with minor altercations. Now with old statutes of PhD coming into vogue, the teachers concerned, who would act as guides and deans would manage the show at the respective dean’s chamber.

The newly built office houses chambers of deans of humanities (Rita Shukla), social science (Sachidanand Pandey), science (G.P. Sharan) and commerce (S.N.L. Das). Every PhD pre-registration seminar, pre-submission seminar and final viva voce by internal and external university experts will be videographed.

Head of post-graduate department of geography A.P. Sahu said the new method would help in ensuring that different processes of PhD were transparent and would identify “serious” students and guides.

Some of the departments of RU have a reputation of issuing fake PhD degrees and the guides are reportedly hand in glove with the research scholars in such cases.

There are instances of post-graduate students coming from far off places like Maharashtra and Rajasthan among others to obtain a “hassle-free” PhD degree here.

The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) relaxation of eligibility for lectureship norms that now allow PhD holders without NET/SLET/JET degrees to apply for lectureship has further led to post-graduate candidates making a beeline for the state varsity for getting registered as a PhD aspirant.

Moreover, recently the office of governor, also the chancellor of the varsity, ordered to keep in abeyance a new PhD statute practised by RU that brought in provision of entrance tests and other stringent rules.

RU had failed to obtain a mandatory nod from the chancellor before implementing the “noble” rules aimed to improve quality of research and discourage quantity of aspirants.

The dean of commerce said that the new initiative of RU would certainly help in ensuring quality of research in the varsity.

Other varsities will follow suit in the future.