KATHMANDU, Dec 20: The Nepal English Language Teachers' Association (NELTA) has deleted a controversial article credited to Tribhuvan University (TU) Vice Chancellor (VC) Tirtha Khaniya recently.

Khaniya was accused of plagiarism in his article titled 'Use of Authentic Materials and Cultural Content in EFL Classrooms' written for the academic journal published by NELTA in 2006.

In the article Khaniya had lifted a large section from Turkish academic Ferit Kilickaya's article titled 'Authentic Materials and Cultural Content in EFL Classrooms' without authentic citation.

The article by VC Khaniya was on NELTA website until November 15, 2016. However, it has now been removed from the website. Republica has snapshot evidence of the article's presence on the web until November 15.

However, NELTA officials claimed that they removed the content much earlier, in February 2016, while uploading new articles and documents during NELTA's anniversary. "The article was not deleted recently, it was replaced in February," said a NELTA official.

NELTA President Mira Shrestha expressed ignorance about the matter. "I don't know anything about it. We are updating our website. That might have caused the removal," she said.

The document has been removed at a time when Dr Govinda KC, professor at the Institute of Medicine, raised concern about Khaniya's alleged plagiarism and demanded investigation.

VC Khaniya said that he did not know anything about deletion of the article. "I did not have any communication with NELTA regarding removal of the article. I believe it was removed when controversy over the article started," he said.

Prof Khaniya further said that he published the Examination for Enhanced Learning, by acknowledging the citation without giving due credit to the original author. "It has been already corrected," he claimed.

Khaniya's intellectual property theft made headlines when Khaniya's name was recommended for the post of TU VC.