Bhubaneswar, April 10: The technical education department has ordered a probe into the appointment of principals for the College of Engineering and Technology (CET) in the city and the Parala Maharaja Engineering College (PMEC) in Berhampur.

"We have received the complaint and ordered a probe into the matter. The university authorities have been asked to submit the required information and report at the earliest," said additional secretary of the department P.K. Dash.

The order came following objections raised by a section of educators, who alleged that the appointments in both these institutions had been done in an unfair manner.

The Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) had, on January 28 last year, advertised for both the positions, and the last date for submission of application was February 20.

The then BPUT vice-chancellor, J.K. Sathpathy, had kept the interview pending for an entire year and completed the appointment process in a hurried manner during his last working day of his five-year tenure that fell on February 13.

Besides, the selection of principals for four other affiliated colleges were also done in a similar hurry on February 8 and 9 at BPUT office in Rourkela.

According to the regulations, no interview should be conducted three months before the retirement of the vice-chancellor.

Educators and others under the banner "Odisha Intellectual Forum" had approached the state government in February, protesting against this "unethical" conduct of interview.

Many applicants for the post rued that the interview process was unfair and humiliating for them. The forum rued that similar hasty appointments had been made in the past for the posts of assistant professor in various constituent colleges.

"Teachers selected for premier colleges such as the CET and the PMEC are unable to teach the students properly as most of them have graduated from ordinary private colleges," said Ramesh Chandra Nayak of the forum.

The forum alleged that the BPUT had already been defamed for various irregularities and mismanagement during the past several years, and these kinds of appointments were sure to ruin the reputation even further.

The forum members reasoned that the interview should ideally have been conducted under the chairmanship of some other government representative. They have demanded a fresh selection of the principals and staff members under the new vice-chancellor, Shyam Sundar Pattnaik, who took charge on March 16.

Pattnaik was a professor at the National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research, Chandigarh.