Unintentional lapses: Al-Falah University reply to NAAC ‘false accreditation claims’
The officials said the university was ‘apologetic’ in its response, has since removed the claims, and that no further action is currently being pursued
Al-Falah University in Faridabad, which is under scanner in connection with the Delhi blast probe, on Friday replied to a show-cause notice issued by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) over false accreditation.
According to NAAC officials, the university in its reply admitted that the outdated accreditation claims on its website were an “oversight”, a “website-design error,” and the result of “unintentional” lapses.
The officials said the university was ‘apologetic’ in its response, has since removed the claims, and that no further action is currently being pursued.
NAAC has also issued notices to 25 other institutions found displaying expired accreditation grades and asked them to remove the claims from their websites, they added.
Two days after investigators linked Faridabad’s Al-Falah Medical College to the November 10 Red Fort blast that killed at least 12 people, NAAC had flagged the university for displaying “absolutely wrong and misleading” accreditation information— claiming an A grade for its engineering college from 2013 and accreditation for its teacher education school from 2011, even though NAAC accreditation is valid only for five years.
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The university was directed to remove all false claims immediately, file a compliance report, and respond within seven days.
“Al-Falah University gave a very long explanation about why the outdated accreditation information remained on their website. They stated that it was an oversight or a website-design mistake and informed us that they have now removed it,” said an official.
A second official said Al-Falah University “did not provide a straightforward explanation” to NAAC regarding the display of outdated accreditation claims.
“They said it was a mistake as some old pages were overlooked, and that a staff member had failed to remove the information. They were apologetic and insisted it was not intentional,” the official said. Monitoring every institution manually is difficult, he said, especially when expired claims are kept on inner web pages rather than the homepage.
The notices are part of NAAC’s broader policy decision linked to its accreditation framework, which requires institutions to follow strict norms on how accreditation status is disclosed.
Al-Falah University is under scrutiny for its finances as well as alleged misuse of its infrastructure.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on November 18 arrested Jawad Ahmed Siddiqui, chairman of the Al-Falah group and said that the university misrepresented itself as NAAC-accredited and falsely claimed eligibility under Section 12(B) of the UGC Act.
The Association of Indian Universities (AIU) has already revoked the university’s membership and NMC removed the names of four doctors associated the terror module – Muzaffar Ahmad, Adeel Ahmad Rather, Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie and Shaheen Shahid – from its medical register, disallowing them from practising medicine after they were booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for their involvement in Delhi blast.
Earlier, on November 12, university vice-chancellor Bhupinder Kaur in a statement said that the institution has no connection to the arrested doctors “apart from them working in their official capacity”.