The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA), along with other teachers’ groups, has launched a massive campaign against the blanket implementation of the economically weaker section (EWS) quota in recruitment of teaching staff. EWS reservation was introduced during the first stint of the Narendra Modi government to provide a quota to economically backward individuals coming from the upper caste segment of the country. The DUTA has also called a protest strike outside the Vice Chancellor (V-C) Yogesh Taygi’s office on Monday. The reason behind their protest against the implementation of EWS in recruitment of teaching staff is that the current recruitment process has started to fill the posts lying vacant for more than a decade and is not meant for the increased seats that will be created due to the implementation of the EWS quota.
According to the agitating teachers’ groups, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) should come up with revised vacancies which would include the increased number of posts created due to the implementation of EWS quota or the EWS quota should not be implemented in the current recruitment process that is on. In a statement, Rajib Ray, DUTA president, said: “EWS reservation in teaching cadre without releasing additional posts has become a way of denying livelihood to those who have worked for years in DU teaching as ad-hoc staff. On the other hand, the DU V-C has denied promotions to teachers from the date of eligibility, leading to loss of years of service (up to 10 years in some cases) and this move cannot be tolerated. The DUTA will launch its agitation to save the livelihood and service conditions of teachers of DU.”
However, a section of teachers and aspirants have blamed the Left-led DUTA for allegedly disrupting the ongoing recruitment process “just to satisfy their ideological differences with the current dispensation”. A DU teacher said: “The whole drama is being created by the Left-linked teachers’ groups. There is no logic behind their agitation; they may be right in saying that the interest of ad-hoc teachers should be protected, but criticising EWS quota and protesting against its implementation in recruitment is just absurd.”
Rajesh Jha, who is an elected member of DU’s Executive Council (EC), asked: “How can we accept the rosters being prepared flouting the norms and rules of DU when jobs of thousands of ad-hoc teachers are at the stake?”
“We are not going to accept arbitrary imposition of EWS quota. The quota in teachers’ recruitment in the current format without release of additional posts will lead to the denial of livelihood and service conditions of thousands of individual teachers’ across colleges of DU,” Jha said.