Three new IIT directors chosen after 10-minute interviews

April 17, 2015 12:07

According to human resources development ministry officials, panels headed by Minister Smriti Irani completed all the interviews for the post of directors of IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Patna and IIT Ropar in six hours on a Sunday last month, reports the Telegraph, Kolkata.

In all, interviews of 36 candidates were completed in six hours -- an average of 10 minutes per candidate.

Late on Thursday night the new IIT directors were announced: Prof R V Raja Kumar of IIT Kharagpur is the new director of IIT Bhubaneswar, Prof Pushpak Bhattacharyya of IIT Bombay is director of IIT Patna, and Prof Sarit Kumar Das of IIT Madras will be the director of IIT Ropar.

The fast-paced interviews has led an IIT-Kanpur professor to wonder how the panel can decide on a candidate's suitability for the job in just 10 minutes.

"In 10 minutes, the selection panel can choose somebody if they know him from the past. If the panel members do not know a person, that person has little chance no matter how competent he is," Professor Dhiraj Sanghi told the Telegraph, before the new appointments were announced.

The newspaper also made it clear that neither Prof Sanghi nor anyone had cast any aspersions on the new appointments or questioned their competence.

The Telegraph also quoted Prof M Anandakrishnan, the IIT Kanpur chairman and a member of one of the selection panels as saying. "Now, the selection is over. I do not want to make any comment. Let us not try to make a new controversy.'

HRD Minister Smriti Irani was more forthright. "I am not giving you an interview,' she told the newspaper.

Prof Sanghi told the Telegraph that when Irani held the interviews for IIT director last month, a candidate was given five minutes to make a short presentation and another five to take questions.

Incidentally, IIT Bombay chairman Anil Kakodkar, who was on all three selection panels, skipped the March 22 interviews, throwing the IIT directors' selection into a controversy.

You can read the full report here.

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