Thiruvananthapuram, Jul 5 (IANS): Leader of Opposition V.D.Satheesan on Wednesday demanded a probe into the PhD of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s additional private secretary Dr Ratheesh Kaliyadan.

While interacting with the media here, Satheesan said that the students' wing of the Congress (KSU) had raised the issue of the PhD but there has been no response to it from any quarters.

“The KSU has alleged that Kaliyadan got his PhD from Assam University ( 2012-14). According to the rules, the minimum time taken by a regular candidate for a PhD is three years and if its part time, it takes four years, but this official in Vijayan’s office got his doctoral degree in two years.

"Another allegation that the KSU has raised is when the check for plagiarism was done on his thesis, it was found to be 70 per cent, while the mandatory accepted norm is around 15 per cent. We are waiting to hear what Vijayan’s office has to say on this,” said Satheesan.

A probe should be conducted on the allegations raised by the KSU, he added.

In the past weeks, few incidents of forgery and production of fake certificates by SFI activists have surfaced and K.Vidya, a former SFI activist was in jail after it emerged that she managed to get a guest lecturers job using a forged experience certificate.

The KSU activists are now waiting to hear from the UGC and Assam University about Kaliaydan’s PhD.

The Congress-led UDF have been up in arms against the alleged collapse of the higher education sector in the state and even the Chancellor –Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan expressed grave concern on the happenings leading to what he termed "extremely serious".