DU: Teachers organisations form Democratic United Teachers’ Alliance ahead of DUTA election

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) election 2023, several teachers organisations have come together to form an alliance and announced Aditya Narayan Misra as the joint candidate for the post of DUTA president.

DUTA election 2023 is scheduled to be held on September 27. Over 10,000 teachers of Delhi University will cast their vote to elect the leadership of their collective. The alliance, Democratic United Teachers’ Alliance (DUTA), was announced in a press conference today.

“There is in immediate and serious need to reclaim the DUTA as a teachers’ collective that works in defence of public funded education and rights of teachers and students in the forthcoming DUTA elections,” the joint statement read.

‘Reclaiming DUTA’

The Democratic United Teachers’ Alliance (DUTA) said that it will defend full public funding and build public opinion against the privatisation and National Education Policy (NEP 2020).

“We are committed to absorption of all existing adhoc and temporary teachers and reinstatement those who have been displaced during the last two years, while protecting the services of those who have already secured permanent appointment."

The group said that it will pursue the demand for restoration of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) and also fight for counting of past services at every stage of promotion and Professorship for Associate Professors who have been left out.

Stating that it will ensure timely payment of salaries, the alliance said: “DU has surreptitiously applied for and been granted graded autonomy with powers to start courses funded through student fees or other means. That the Government wants to gradually reduce funding is evident in the hardships teachers across colleges are facing due to delayed payment, non-payment of salaries, arrears and retirement benefits.”

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Two years of NDTF-led DUTA

The National Democratic Teachers From (NDTF) won the 2021 DUTA election. Taking a dig at NDTF, the alliance alleged that the “NDTF-led DUTA remained silent even in the face of massive displacement of hundreds of ad-hoc teachers in several colleges, specifically where the principals belong to the same political persuasion as the DUTA leadership.”

They further alleged that the claim by the teachers group that the displaced teachers are being absorbed elsewhere is not substantiated by transparent data.

“What is most reprehensible is that instead of taking up the cause of all teachers, the leadership has been selective and discriminate. It is the first time in the history of DUTA that a large number of teachers are afraid of displeasing their own elected representatives,” it added.

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During the press conference, the alliance further claimed that the NDTF did not voice against the “collapse of structures of governance in the University, in particular not constituting the governing bodies (GBs) in 28 Delhi Government Colleges”.

The span of UG programmes has been raised to four years “without any provision of additional teachers, support staff and infrastructure”, it alleged.

The Democratic United Teachers’ Alliance appealed to all teachers to support their joint candidate, Aditya Narayan Misra, in the forthcoming elections. The alliance has been formed by DTF, AADTA, INTEC, Common Teachers’ Front (CTF), Delhi Teachers’ Initiative (DTI), Independent Teachers’ Front for Social Justice (ITF-SJ), Samajwadi Shikshak Manch (SSM), Voice of DU Adhocs Sanoj Kumar, Maya John AADTA.