Delhi High Court has issued notices to Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Centre and the University Grants Commission in connection with the removal of a supervisor of two PhD students who had already submitted their theses, a decision that fuelled allegations of denial of credit and exposed policy flaws in the supervision of research scholars.

A division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela issued the notices on a petition filed by Rajeev Kumar, a retired computer science professor of JNU.

At the time of retirement in March last year, Kumar was supervising five research scholars. Three of them had submitted their theses, one had completed it, while another was pursuing his research.

According to the JNU PhD ordinance, a supervisor will become a co-supervisor upon retirement even if the thesis is complete. The UGC’s regulations on PhD also provide for the retention of a supervisor as a co-supervisor on retirement, but do not specify if such a change would be enforced for completed theses.

However, the rules in IITs are different. At IIT Kharagpur, if the thesis is submitted within six months of the date of retirement of the guide, the institute will appoint a caretaker supervisor to oversee the administrative responsibilities with regard to the submission of the thesis. The main supervisor will continue to guide the student. At IIT Bombay, the credit for supervision will go to the supervisor if 80 per cent of the thesis work is complete at the time of retirement.

After Kumar’s retirement, JNU removed him as the supervisor of the two PhD scholars who had already submitted their theses and replaced him with another senior faculty member. Kumar was not even made the co-supervisor. The changes were made at the request of the research students.

Kumar continued as the main supervisor for three other students.

Kumar contended that JNU selectively and arbitrarily applied its rules to deny him credit for the research work of two students while allowing him to continue as the main supervisor in the case of the three other students.

“JNU’s decision led to the denial of rightful credit to me in my own supervised work. This is not only about my research — it is about the systemic collapse of accountability. When supervisors are replaced after the completion of the thesis, integrity is lost,” Kumar said.

The court will hear the matter again on November 12.

An email was sent to JNU vice-chancellor Prof Santishree D. Pandit seeking her comments on the issue. Her response is awaited.