'UCMS will stay with Delhi University': AADTA calls Delhi Govt’s order ‘agenda for privatisation’

NEW DELHI: The All India Academic and Democratic Teachers’ Association (AADTA) has opposed the Delhi government’s order directing Delhi University to denotify the University College of Medical Sciences (UCMS) from its list of institutions. “This office order unilaterally alters the service condition of faculty and staff of UCMS, which is NOT acceptable at all,” the teachers group said.

In an order dated March 18, 2025, Delhi University was instructed to hand over the administrative and financial control over the UCMS to the Delhi government by April 1. Criticizing the Delhi government for its decision to “balkanise DU so that the agenda of NEP 2020 for privatisation and contractualisation can be imposed easily”, the AADTA said.

“AADTA is committed to upholding DU Ordinance XX-D under which UCMS was, is, and will be a university-maintained college for ever,” it said. DU Ordinance XX-D, outlines its governance structure, powers, and functions within the Delhi University system.

The university has been ordered to dissolve the executive council of UCMS, which is against the DUTA resolution for university and UGC regulations, it said, adding that "this is also to dilute the academic diversity under the umbrella of DU and to disintegrate the hundred-year-old university.”

DU and the Delhi government have fought over control of Delhi University's only medical college for decades. Notably, the Delhi High Court stayed the transfer order in 2016.

“Whenever such attempts were made during the tenure of Aditya Narayan Misra as DUTA President, they could NOT be allowed to be implemented. In the past, we ensured that such government measures are repulsed,” it said. The teachers' group also referred to a similar case where the university informed the city government that the DU’s College of Arts will not be de-affiliated.