Pay hike issue of IIT faculty appears resolved

The Ministry for Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) seem to have reached a positive conclusion over the pay hike of the faculty members of the premier educational institutes.

Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today met the IIT directors for an-hour-and-a-half to discuss around 13 important issues, including that of pay scale.

While the IIT directors were reluctant to comment on the proceedings of the meeting, a senior ministry official said: “With all the IIT directors present at the meeting, the issue related to pay hikes for the faculty appears resolved. The ministry made a presentation to the IIT directors on how the IIT salaries are better than the UGC ones and the directors were convinced.”

Sibal assured them that their grievances would be considered positively. Though there were some minor concerns, the minister said these would be considered after obtaining appropriate orders, the official added.

An IIT director Business Standard spoke to said on condition of anonymity: “I am satisfied with the discussions that took place and hope that the IIT system too agrees to the same.”

However, when contacted, a member from the All India IIT Faculty Federation said if their demands were not met, they would approach the HRD ministry on September 6. The federation has given the ministry a deadline till September 4 to come up with a solution on this matter. Another IIT director confirmed that faculty members from his institute planned to meet the MHRD. The IIT faculties have been demanding that assistant professors should be placed in higher pay band besides performance-related “scholastic pay” and compensation to aspiring faculties for the time they spend in research before taking up teaching as a profession.

Faculty of some IITs had staged strike recently in protest against the new pay regime passed by the Union Cabinet last month based on the recommendations of the Goverdhan Mehta Committee report.