Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has appointed Vice- Chancellors (VC) in four universities on Monday. The appointments were made on the recommendation of a committee chaired by Education Minister Chitra Lekha Yadav.

In his capacity as the Chancellor of those universities, PM Koirala appointed Tirtha Raj Khaniya, Kul Prasad Koirala, Ghanashyam Lal Das and Bhushan Shrestha as the VCs of Tribhuvan University, Nepal Sanskrit University, Purbanchal University and Sudur Paschimanchal University respectively, according to PM Koirala's press coordinator Prakash Adhikari.

Of them, Professor Tirtha Raj Khaniya, the vice chancellor nominee for Tribhuvan University, has been accused of plagiarism.

While he headed the English Education Department of TU in 2006, Khaniya had lifted section of an article written by Ferit Kilickaya, associate professor at Middle East Technical University and Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, Turkey. Khaniya had copied a large section of the article in his own work titled ‘Use of authentic materials in EFL classrooms’ that was published in a journal of the Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA).

The post of VCs remain vacant in three more universities.