CVC clears P P Chakraborty as IIT-Kharagpur director

NEW DELHI: After many months of
wrangling P P Chakraborty has been finally
cleared for the post of director at IIT-
Kharagpur.
The Central Vigilance Commission's (CVC)
clearance came late on Thursday. The HRD
ministry was under tremendous pressure
from IIT-Kharagpur alumni association and
other industrial bigwigs to get go ahead for
Chakraborty. On Saturday when the
convocation takes place IIT-Kharagpur
would finally have a director.
Chakraborty's name was cleared last year,
but later findings that he did not have the
vigilance clearance led to the delay.
Chakraborty was one of the three IIT
professors who were named by the CBI in
the Coalnet scam in which work given to
insititute was outsourced by the institute.
CBI had recommended minor penalty
against Chakraborty and major penalty
against two of his colleagues A K Bhowmick
and R N Banerjee . Even CVC has told IIT-
Kharagpur to chargesheet Bhowmick and
Banerjee.
Sources said CVC has accepted Chakraborty's
defence that when he took over as the head
of the Sponsored Research and Industrial
Consultancy the Coalnet project was in the
mature stage. He explained that the
outsourced company TCG was taken only
for manpower services to work under the
control of the IIT team. He also denied and
provided a sequence of events about the
allegation of writing a backdated letter.
The HRD ministry that requested the CVC to
give him the vigilance clearance first
accepted Chakraborty's defence. However,
CVC has said he should be cautious in
future.