The agency had been sifting through the records of over 600 institutions recognised to run teacher training programmes and found major discrepancies in their documents
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has recently filed a criminal case against 21 educational institutions in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and many officials from the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), an autonomous body under the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry.
The agency had been sifting through the records of over 600 institutions recognised to run teacher training programmes and found major discrepancies in their documents.
NCTE accords recognition to institutions after its officials, also known as visiting teams (VT), inspects the infrastructure and academic facilities of educational institutions.
According to the NCTE mandate, for admitting 50 students, a college should have a minimum built-up area of 15,000 sq m and land area of 2,500 sq m, including parking space. However, these 21 institutes were not following the mandate.
Officials said there are also instances of institutions providing bogus addresses and some did not even have buildings on the ground.
These institutions are in Bengaluru, Bijapur, Hubli and Chitradurga in Karnataka and Madnapalle, Guthkal, Tadipatri, Kurnool, Nandiyala, Nandikotkur, Dharmavaram, Chittoor, Karveti Nagaram and Kadappa in Andhra Pradesh.
While the CBI has named only 21 institutes so far, officials did not rule out the possibility of more being brought under the lens.
"In spite of several irregularities, they were granted recognition by the NCTE for the academic year 2016-17," the FIR reads. The agency has booked the accused under Sections for criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and criminal misconduct.
"The visiting teams also observed certain discrepancies in documents such as building completion certificates, size of land, and land utilisation certificates. The public servants have collectively failed to conduct proper verification and inspection of buildings and have still issued recognition certificates," CBI documents said.
Some of the institutes are Kalidas Training Teacher Education in Karnataka, IBMR College of Education in Hubli, Aditya College of Education in Bengaluru, SAS college of Education in Nandikotkur in Andhra.
The CBI said that officials of the Southern Regional Committee (SRC), NCTE, Bengaluru, the office of the Regional Director, Southern Region, NCTE, Bengaluru, and VT officials entered into a criminal conspiracy with the heads of the 21 institutions.
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