Scientist Dr CNR Rao. Scientist Dr CNR Rao.

The PIL filed by Law student Tanaya Thakur and Class XII student Aditya Thakur in Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench challenging Bharat Ratna award to scientist Dr CNR Rao shall be heard today (Thursday) before the Bench of Chief Justice Dr Dhananjay Yashwant Chandrachud and Justice D K Arora.The petition says that Bharat Ratna is the highest award of this country and must be given after utmost scrutiny. There are many scientists like Jagdish Chandra Bose, S N Bose, Meghnad Saha, Dr Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai etc who made much more lasting and important contribution to science compared to Dr Rao, who comes as occupying posts in government most of the time due to proximity to power.Secondly, Dr Rao has allegedly published 1400 research papers which is physically impossible, given the fact that one good research takes at least 6 to 8 months. He has been alleged of plagiarism of an article in foreign journal Advance Materials, for which he even apologized. Other allegations of plagiarism have been made against him for December 2011 issue of the Journal of Luminescence, January 2006 issue of Advanced Materials and another paper published in 2010 in the Applied Physics Express.Tanaya and Aditya have said that a scientist with proven cases of plagiarism shall not be presented the highest civilian award and hence the award notification needs to be quashed.