Bengaluru: Criminal cases booked against 249 guest lecturers who submitted fake PhD certificates

They will also be prosecuted for committing fraud by providing false information/documents to the government. | Image for presentation purposes | Photo credit: sengchoy

The higher education department has ordered registration of criminal cases against 249 teachers who got admission as guest faculty in tier one government colleges in 2025-26 by submitting fake/invalid doctorate certificates.

Even as the recruitment process for visiting lecturers in these colleges for the year 2026-27 is on, all the tainted candidates have been blacklisted and barred from the process. The order issued by the Commissioner, Collegiate Education permanently blacklists these candidates for years to come.

In 2025-26, the state government has recruited about 10,000 visiting faculty through an online counseling process in line with the workload required in the colleges based on the information provided by the candidates.

Principals of the respective colleges have been instructed to compulsorily obtain the authenticity reports for PG marks, National Eligibility Test (NET), Karnataka State Eligibility Test (K-SET), PhD, MPhil and Kalyana Karnataka submitted by the selected candidates from the respective Universities/Institutions as a one-time procedure. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) have been issued for the same.

As per this SOP, applicants’ certificates were verified and if found to be ‘fake’ or ‘invalid’, a committee headed by the Principal was tasked with releasing the tainted guest lecturers from service and uploading the report on the Department’s Educational Management Information System (EMIS) portal. Only if visiting lecturers objected to the decision of the collegium, such cases were submitted to the department directorate together with all relevant documents for further investigation.

All the academic documents of the visiting lecturers were checked by committees headed by senior officers at the college level and headquarters level, and a total of 249 people were caught issuing fake PhD certificates, leading the department to throw them out and blacklist them.

They will also be prosecuted for committing fraud by providing false information/documents to the government.

Published – 23 Jul 2026 19:05 IST