New Delhi, Feb. 17: Fifty-four of the 61 deemed universities that were approved during Arjun Singh’s tenure as human resource development minister between 2004 and 2009 are unfit for the tag, an HRD ministry review has found.

The findings of the confidential review report, accessed by The Telegraph, are an indictment of India’s education policy makers, and expose the extent of the rot in higher education standards they allowed over the past five years.

The report also confirms that barring seven exceptions, India’s best deemed universities earned the tag in the years before higher education offered lucrative business opportunities that could be milked through corruption.

The probe, ordered by HRD minister Kapil Sibal within days of taking over from Arjun last year, divided 126 deemed universities into three categories based on its findings. The remaining four of India’s 130 deemed varsities did not participate in the review.

The institutions were assessed by the probe panel on nine parameters — ranging from their vision for the varsity and compliance with University Grants Commission norms to research output and levels of innovation employed.

In an affidavit submitted before the Supreme Court last month, the ministry had disclosed a list of 44 that the review found were incapable of ever meeting standards required of deemed universities.

But the review report and the deemed universities in the other two categories — 44 unfit for the tag but deserving a three-year lifeline and 38 “good” institutes fit for the tag — have been kept a closely-guarded secret.

Understandably, perhaps Government institutions dominate the list of 38 deemed universities found fit by the review panel — 21 of the names on this list are public universities, while 17 are private.

The list of “good” deemed universities predictably includes some of the country’s finest institutions — both public and private.

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai and other top research institutions and the Birla Institute of Science and Technology in Pilani and Mesra (Jharkhand) are on this list.

But a study of when these institutions received the deemed tag — and with that the power to award degrees — reveals that only a minuscule minority of quality varsities joined this league under Arjun.

India had 69 deemed varsities before he took over as HRD minister and today has 130 — no new institutions have received the tag after the UPA came back to power a second time. But the near doubling in number of deemed varsities added only seven institutions to the “good” league, according to the report.

The seven include two government institutions — the North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology in Itanagar and the Kerala Kalamandalam in Thrissur.

The other five are private — Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (Visakhapatnam), International Institute of Information Technology (Bangalore), IIS University (Jaipur), Chennai Mathematical Institute, and Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute (Howrah).

The Ramakrishna Mission institute is Bengal’s sole deemed university.

The remaining 54 of the 61 deemed universities approved by Arjun’s ministry are unfit for the tag, the review has said.

Of these, 17 are on the list of 44 institutions deemed unfit but given the three-year lifeline to meet required standards.

The rest 37 do not even deserve the lifeline, the review has found.