A complaint of plagiarism wouldn’t exactly be out of place in Bihar. The state has earned its stripes in the world of unethical examination protocols. This is a fact. However, when a plagiarism allegation moves way up the ladder, to the chief minister, it does raise eyebrows. It is immaterial, legally, if the chief minister really had no a hand in the plagiarism.

On Wednesday, the Delhi High Court dismissed a plea from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to have his name deleted as defendant in a lawsuit on copyright violation. The suit, by former JNU scholar (now a politician) Atul Kumar Singh, landed at Joint Registrar Sanjeev Aggarwal’s court. The court imposed a cost of Rs 20,000 on the chief minister.

Singh, also from Bihar, had complained in his suit that a book published by Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI), through its Member Secretary Shaibal Gupta, was actually a plagiarised version of his research. Incidentally with Nitish endorsing the book, the chief minister is also legally implicated. In short, Nitish Kumar is also a plagiarist.

Singh, an independent candidate from Chhapra for the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, had named the chief minister as a defendant, and the court maintained that the application (by Nitish Kumar) was a “sheer abuse of process of the law” as the plaintiff [the scholar] was entitled to choose the defendants.

Nitish Kumar had maintained in his application that he had not written the book—titled Special Category Status: A Case for Bihar—but had just endorsed it, and that this implication by Singh was done with “mala fide” intent.

The Joint Registrar took into account certification by two of Singh’s supervisors from JNU, saying that the work as original. The research was released on May 14, 2009, a day before the book came out. The Registrar maintained: “The facts are cumulatively sufficient to give right to sue to the plaintiff [Singh] against defendant no.1 [Kumar].”

According to the order, “…the present interim application [by Nitish Kumar] is sheer abuse of process of law. Same is dismissed with cost of Rs 20,000”.

The overall damages claimed is to the tune of Rs 25 lakh. This is from defendants Gupta, the ADRI, and its sister concern, the Centre for Economic Policy and Public Finance, as well as Nitish Kumar.

The chief minister’s counsel has said that he will appeal to an appropriate bench of the high court.

—India Legal Bureau