‘Nearly 4,000 teaching staff posts are lying vacant in various colleges of DU.’
New Delhi: More than a dozen departments of Delhi University (DU) don’t have a permanent dean or head and this is resulting in difficulties in the smooth functioning of the university.
According to Rajesh Jha, a member of DU’s Executive Council (EC), there are 13 departments that don’t have a dean or permanent head. Additionally, there are two more departments whose deans’ tenures have ended, but they are temporarily working as deans on the request of the University administration.
Jha told The Sunday Guardian: “The University administration is reluctant to function in a normal manner; it comes up with strange anti-education initiatives, and is not taking care of the real needs of the university. There are 13 departments that don’t have a permanent dean or head. Nearly 20 DU colleges have no permanent principals. The funds allocated for various development works of the University are not being used properly.”
“Due to the vacant posts in various departments, research and other similar work are getting affected. Administrative works in these departments have almost stopped, but the DU administration, mainly the Vice-Chancellor (V-C), is reluctant to address these problems,” Jha said.
According to the EC member, in the Faculty of Medical Science, posts of eight department heads are laying vacant; similarity, in the Faculty of Social Science, three posts of heads are vacant. The Faculty of Interdisciplinary and Applied Science and Faculty of Commerce have one post of head vacant in each centre. DU V-C Yogesh Tyagi is yet to form a permanent team of officials, including a full time pro-V-C, Dean of Colleges, and Proctor.
Appointment of administrative staff and teaching staff has been at the centre of demands in the agitation led by DU teachers, but the University’s affairs are still being run in an ad-hoc manner. Nearly 4,000 teaching staff posts are vacant in the various colleges of DU and the teaching is being managed by ad-hoc teachers.
The DU administration is mulling of introducing a new curriculum from the coming session; also, the DU administration is working on bringing an entrance-based admission system, but it has not initiated or devised any method to fill the vacant posts.
On the promise of anonymity, a DU teacher told The Sunday Guardian: “The number of students taking admissions in the University’s colleges has been on the rise, but the University has not filled the posts of teaching staff for the last one decade. The ratios of teachers to students have risen and it has impacted the teaching standards of the University.”