NEW DELHI: The HRD ministry has "informally" apprised minister Kapil Sibal about Wednesday's incident in Indira Gandhi National Open University when vice-chancellor VN Rajasekharan Pillai left the Board of Management meeting half-way on the ground that he had some personal work and instead landed in Patna to sign an MoU with the Bihar government.

Till the time Pillai was in the meeting, the Board of Management had deferred the issue of MoU with Bihar and pro-VC OP Mishra had insisted that his dissent on the same issue be put on record.

On Thursday morning, a senior ministry official said education secretary RP Agarwal was first apprised of the incident followed by an informal note to the minister's office. Sources said Pillai is also believed to have given a written reply to Sibal on a series of allegations against his working as IGNOU VC.

Pillai did not respond to several calls. However, a guest faculty of IGNOU called on his behalf asking that questions be sent on email, which was done immediately. When told about the urgency of the matter, the guest faculty said the VC could not be pressed to reply immediately.

The MoU in question is a Rs 246.05-crore project for a professional training and certification diploma (DPE) in Primary Education Training to over 2.4 lakh untrained primary teachers in Bihar and an additional 210 lakh unemployed youths who can be employed as additional primary teachers.

The problem with the project is that IGNOU's School of Education has not been consulted. More importantly, teacher education is the domain of the National Council for Teachers Education (NCTE). In this case, the NCTE's approval has not been taken.

Sources point out a bigger problem with the project is the manner in which a private company has been appointed as the lead manager for the Bihar project. "IGNOU is very strong in Bihar. We have centres in Darbhanga and Patna. We could have easily done what has been given to a private company," a member of IGNOU's Board of Management said.

source: TOI