Plagiarism and similarity reduction in Bangalore

How much similarity does each Bengaluru university allow in a thesis?

Bengaluru City University admitted its 2026–27 scholars under Bangalore University’s 2024 regulations. We haven’t found a separate plagiarism procedure of its own. So ask its Registrar (Evaluation) whose library runs your check. The general picture of the UGC levels and exclusions is in our guide to similarity limits across Indian universities.

How does the Bangalore University library check work, and what do you sign?

The procedure is in the university library’s Plagiarism Policy and Regulations. It was framed under the UGC’s 2018 regulations and is listed on the university’s statutes page. Clause 17.5 of the 2024 Ph.D. regulations then says the library-certified report must be bound into the thesis.

1. Before final submission, you give the soft copy to the Librarian. The Librarian sends the report and the document to your head of department and to you.
2. If the report shows a problem, the head of department calls the Departmental Academic Integrity Committee. It has three members: the head, an outside academician and someone who knows the software. The committee must hear you before it recommends anything to the university-level committee.
3. What the committee leaves out: several kinds of text don’t count. Quoted work with permission or attribution is left out. So are references, bibliography, contents, preface and acknowledgements. Generic terms, laws, standard symbols and equations are left out too, and so are names of the university and departments. The policy also puts common-knowledge or coincidental phrasing of up to fourteen consecutive words outside the count.
4. Three forms. Annexure I records the software, date, similarity index and total word count. On it, your supervisor ticks whether the index is below or above accepted norms, and gives reasons if above. Annexure II is a notarised affidavit on ₹100 non-judicial stamp paper. In it you name the tool the thesis was checked on. Annexure III is your supervisor’s Self Plagiarism Exclusion Certificate.

Annexure III matters if your papers are chapters. Only the papers your supervisor lists on it may be excluded. No other paper by you or your supervisor is. If a listed paper has co-authors, you also need their consent letter and the publisher’s permission. Clause 17.8 of the regulations sets the stakes: if a thesis is proved to be plagiarised, the degree is rescinded. A supervisor found complicit loses guideship for at least three years.

How does VTU run the DrillBit check on a thesis from a Bengaluru research centre?

VTU checks the thesis centrally, not at your college. The Registrar (Evaluation) issued a notice on 15 May 2023, and it’s reproduced in the PhD Manual 2024. That notice made DrillBit the tool for all theses and set the permitted index at 10% or less. The workflow printed with it says:

• the check excludes the bibliography, index and references.
• on the first check, your thesis is not added to the software’s repository.
• the report goes to you, your guide, your co-guide and the Registrar (Evaluation). You may print the thesis only after a letter clearing it.
• above 10%, you revise and resubmit with a ₹5,000 fee. The third submission costs ₹10,000 and is final.

The anti-plagiarism procedure on VTU’s formats page hasn’t caught up and still says 25% or less, with ₹5,000 and then ₹7,500. The 2023 regulations (clause 23PHD 8.3.2) give no figure at all. They refer to VTU’s own academic integrity regulations of 2023 and allow three submissions in all. Aim for 10% or less.

Timing matters in two places. The synopsis needs its own plagiarism report, from your research centre, before it goes to the committee. And the March 2026 checklist says the thesis check starts only once the complete thesis is uploaded and the hard copy has reached Belagavi. The 2023 notification also opened the DrillBit facility to VTU’s affiliated, autonomous and constituent colleges. So ask your research centre to run chapters through it as you finish them. Our DrillBit guide shows how to read that report.

What do RGUHS, CHRIST and IISc add about software and AI?

RGUHS. Its circular of 12 January 2026 announced that the HELINET Consortium had licensed DrillBit. Postgraduates and faculty can use it to check dissertations, theses and articles. The circular asked each college to name a person to handle it. Clause 11.3 of the 2021 ordinance makes the check compulsory before evaluation and caps similarity at 15% of total contents. But the ordinance lists no exclusions, so ask your college whether references are left out of that figure.

CHRIST. The 2022 regulations adopt the UGC 2018 regulations as the university’s own 2019 regulation. Repeated plagiarism can cancel your admission and bar you from future PhD admission there. The Centre for Research’s procedures send a detected case to a sub-committee of the Doctoral Committee, which reports to the Vice Chancellor within two weeks.

IISc. Here the job is yours. Under the Student Information Handbook, you check your own thesis with web-based software and you certify that it is original. The library issues Turnitin credentials only to faculty, who help their students use it. The handbook is also the most detailed Bengaluru document on AI. Text reproduced from AI tools counts as plagiarism. You may use AI freely for grammar, punctuation and clarity. Any other use needs your supervisor’s approval. You must also disclose it in the methods or acknowledgements, naming the tool and how you used it. Citing sources that don’t exist is listed as cheating. Our guide to using AI tools in a PhD goes further.

Working with us from Bangalore

All of it happens remotely from Nagercoil. You send the Word file and the report you already have. It might come from your research centre’s DrillBit, the Bangalore University library or a Turnitin account. Then we set up a video call and go through our reading of the report with you. Rewritten passages come back in tracked changes, for you to accept or change. Our note on paraphrasing and quoting sets out the rules we follow.

The local rules decide the order of work. At VTU, every resubmission after the first costs a fee, and the third is final. So clean the thesis up before it’s uploaded, not after a failed check. At Bangalore University, the library check comes before submission, and your supervisor must sign the verification form. Leave time for the supervisor to read the report too. Are your published papers in the thesis? Then start getting co-author and publisher consent letters early.

We produce our report on a standard commercial checker, with the settings written on it. Its database won’t match DrillBit’s exactly. The figure that counts is always the one your university gives you. The notarised affidavit and the signed certificates are yours to arrange. Our ethics policy sets out the line we don’t cross.