DU strike total on day two

Academic work at Delhi University (DU) remained completely suspended for the second consecutive day on Thursday, with university teachers continuing their strike demanding the absorption of ad hoc teachers and the beginning of faculty hiring.

There are about 4,000 ad hoc teachers across 60-plus colleges of DU. Hired temporarily, some of them have been working for more than a decade. The teachers have struck work with the demand to make the ad hoc teachers permanent.

"No one is listening to us. We have been making the same demands for years now -- make ad hocs permanent. All our pleas have fallen on deaf ears, including the Vice Chancellor, who has not deigned to reply or even care that an entire university is not functioning for two days," Rajesh Jha, an Executive Council member, told IANS.

Prakash Javadekar, Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD), had promised two years back that all vacant seats will be filled within a year.

But the government soon after put a stop on hiring again, expressing reservations against a 2017 Allahabad High Court judgement, which decreed a change in the mode of faculty recruitment from one that was based on the university as a unit to the department as a unit.

The government, as did many teachers representations, have said that recruiting with the department as a unit would be detrimental to the chances of SC/ST and OBC candidates.

After it dismissed a Special Leave Petition earlier, the Supreme Court on Wednesday again rejected a review petition filed by the University Grants Commission and the HRD Ministry challenging the verdict.

The HRD Ministry is yet to announce its further course of action.

According to the data given by the Ministry in Parliament last year, the Delhi University faculty was understaffed by almost 60 per cent.

-- IANS

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