The excerpts of the Murmu committee recommendations for revision of emoluments for PhD students was tweeted by DST on February 2. The same was removed when DST again tweeted the official memorandum on February 4. The official memorandum posted on the DST website too does not have the excerpts of the committee recommendations.
On February 2, three days after the government hiked the fellowship of research fellows by 24-25%, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) tweeted: “For the 1st time, Govt has suggested strong financial & academic incentives to enhance & recognise the performance of research fellows, recommendations expected within 4 weeks for continuous enhancement based on performance.”
The operative part of the message is: “…recommendations expected within 4 weeks for continuous enhancement based on performance.”
Behold, DST mysteriously shrunk four weeks to just a few minutes. Within a few minutes, DST tweeted again. The second tweet had three pages of the official memorandum dated February 2 about the constitution of an Inter-ministerial empowered committee for doctoral research under the chairmanship of G.C. Murmu, Officer on Special Duty.
DST’s tweet on February 2 has three pages of the official memorandum, including the excerpts of the committee recommendations.
The third page had the excerpts of the Murmu committee recommendations. Among other things, the recommendations included a one-time grant of Rs.50,000 and Rs.30,000 to PhD students for a paper published in an international and Indian journal respectively. It also mentioned Rs.1,00,000 incentive on obtaining an Indian or international patent.
Page three of the official memorandum.
Mysterious disappearance
The third page that contained the excerpts of the committee recommendations mysteriously disappeared on February 4 when DST once again tweeted the official memorandum. The official memorandum posted on the DST website too does not have the excerpts of the recommendations.
Strangely, the official memorandum tweeted on February 4 as well the one posted on the DST website still has this giveaway sentence: “Excerpts of the recommendations are annexed.”
So why did DST remove the excerpts of the Murmu committee recommendations when it again tweeted the official memorandum on February 4? Why does the official memorandum posted on the DST website not have the excerpts of the recommendations?
“I am not sure why the excerpts of the recommendations have been removed,” DST Secretary Prof. Ashutosh Sharma said to me.
Science Chronicle 
You see the committee contains mostly baboos or those who have lost contact with the exercise of science and I wonder how many among them even/ever read science reports/articles. For years I was a member on research committees in UGC, DST, CSIR, DAE and in most cases, most members had not read the grant requests except those of friends, friend’s associates and grants were agreed mostly on hearsay. But then in those committees, most members were at least partly active scientists unlike what appears here…