NIRF Ranking 2025 Error: BHU’s dental college shows up twice, at both 15 and 18 spots

The Faculty of Dental Sciences at Banaras Hindu University’s Institute of Medical Sciences appears in two places on the National Institutional Ranking Framework’s list of top dental colleges. It first appears as BHU at rank 15 and again as ‘Faculty of Dental Sciences, Institute of Medical Science’ at rank 18.

The NIRF’s India Rankings 2025 were announced on Thursday by education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The ranks come with two sets of data — first, the data submitted by the institutions for the exercise and second, the scores NIRF has awarded on various parameters. In the case of the BHU dental college, the two entries have come with two PDF documents of data which are similar for most years and parameters except for the intake and placements sections.

NIRF Ranking 2025: BHU dental college in two places (Image: NIRF 2025)

However, there are significant differences in the scores awarded by NIRF on each of the parameters, most notably in the case of “Perception”, on which there is a 17.29 point difference, suggesting wildly different “perceptions” of the same dental institution.

NIRF Scores: Same dental college, different marks

The broad parameters on which the NIRF scores institutions include the following:

• Teaching, learning and resources (TLR)
• Research and professional practice (RPC)
• Graduation outcome (GO)
• Outreach and inclusivity (OI)
• Perception

The NIRF has awarded different scores for the same institute on each of these parameters, as shown below.

NIRF 2025 dental college scores for BHU and BHU

Scores in the case of research, graduate outcomes and outreach depend largely on the institution’s own submissions to the NIRF – data on number of teachers, budgets, graduates, placements and so on.

For perception and research publications, as well as their citations, the NIRF employs surveys and analysis of external data repositories.

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BHU’s submissions for NIRF dental ranking

The two documents attached to the entries as BHU’s own submissions are similar.

They report much the same figures for enrolment, graduation, doctoral student and faculty counts, budget and sponsored research projects, albeit with some variations in some years.

However, in the case of placements, the document with the Faculty of Dental Sciences shows significantly higher achievements, both in placement rates and median salaries, especially for past years, 2021-22 and 202-23. Data for 2023-24 is consistent across both submissions. The differences are as shown in the table below.

NIRF Ranking BHU Dental College: Differences in data

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BHU inquiry

A senior professor at the Faculty of Dental Sciences, IMS, BHU said the ranking duplication is a result of “confusion” created when both the faculty and BHU administration made submissions to the NIRF.

The duplication was discovered on Thursday evening and the dental college is now looking into why it happened and the differences in data.

“We [dental college] had sent data directly to NIRF and then sent the same data to Banaras Hindu University which again submitted. We had sent the same data to both and are not sure how the changes happened. We are also inquiring into this,” said the professor, a member of the Faculty of Dental Sciences, BHU. He asked not to be named.

On the NIRF dental college ranking, BHU itself has the institute id “IR-N-U-0500” and the Faculty of Dental Sciences, “IR-N-N-71”. Institutions of higher education are also required to publish their submissions to the NIRF on their own websites. The IMS BHU Faculty of Dental Science’s own website has the submission made by the dental college itself, against the ID, IR-N-N-71.