Delhi teachers urge Mahatma Gandhi Central University to expedite faculty promotion

NEW DELHI: Delhi teachers have written to the chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi Central University (MGCU), Padma Shri Mahesh Sharma, expressing serious concern about the “delay and discrimination” in providing promotions for eligible teachers. They also pointed out issues concerning faculty recruitment and PhD admission.

The Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) national-level teachers’ organisation Academic for Action and Development Delhi Teachers’ Association (AADTA) in a letter demanded the MGCU chancellor to expedite the promotion process and implement the provisions of the sub-clauses I and VI of Clause 6.3 of the UGC Regulations 2018 in letter and spirit.

According to the UGC regulations 2018, Clause 6.3 (I) mandates to “initiate the process of screening/selection, and complete the process within six months from the receipt of application”.

“It's a matter of serious concern that there has been serious arbitrariness in the promotions of the faculty members, who have been selected after the rigorous recruitment process. It's more disturbing that some teachers were selectively given promotions, while the others kept waiting endlessly,” the teachers said.

Highlighting that more than half of the faculty members belong to SC, ST, OBC and EWS categories and are mostly first generation learners from rural backgrounds, the AADTA said: “The discriminatory delay in promotions causes NOT only pecuniary losses, but also adversely affects further upward movement in the career ladder.”

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“It also leads to this university's loss of seats for PhD students as Professors and Associate Professors can take more PhD students. It also has a demotivating and demoralizing effect, hence diminishes the quality of teaching-learning. In this whole arbitrary and authoritarian approach of the university administration, thousands of the students and the researchers are the worst sufferers,” the letter read.

The letter was signed by Aditya Narayan Mishra, former president of Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) and Federation of Central Universities Teachers Association (FEDCUTA), Seema Das and Rajpal Singh Pawar, Executive Council members of Delhi University (DU), and JL Gupta, member of finance committee, DU.