NEW DELHI: Despite repeated notices from the University Grants Commission (UGC), the process of appointments to fill nearly 5,000 permanent teachers’ posts in 67 colleges of Delhi University (DU) is likely to get delayed and is not likely to be over before 2021.
This year in July, UGC secretary Rajnish Jain’s notice directed all higher educational institutions, including universities, colleges, and institutions deemed to be universities, to “adhere to the guidelines in letter and spirit”. The notice directed all the higher educational institutions that the collection and consolidation of vacancies, permission from competent authorities to fill them, and their advertisements should be completed in the next 60 days. During the same time period, institutions were asked to constitute a selection committee, schedule dates for selection committee meetings and for scrutiny of applications. Also, the UGC directed to complete the recruitment process within six months, but the universities failed to comply with the UGC notice.
In view of the delay in the recruitment process, last week, the UGC issued another notice directing DU to speed up the recruitment process in its colleges.
Pankaj Kumar Garg, former DU Academic Council member, said: “It’s ideal to speed up the recruitment process and fill all the vacancies that are around 4,500, but the real problem causing the delay in recruitments is a lack of intent to fill these vacancies at both levels—UGC and the DU.”
“Successive governments at the Centre did not bother to fill these vacancies in the last 15 years and this lackadaisical approach led to gross ad-hocism in DU and its colleges. Currently, there are 4,500 ad-hoc staff teaching in the various DU colleges without having any future security. The UGC’s recruitment notices have come as a hope, but the process of recruitment is so slow that only 15 colleges so far have advertised vacancies,” Garg told The Sunday Guardian.
“The appointment of teaching staff is an expert exercise and thus it takes time in completing the process. Now when the number of vacancies has piled up for many years, it is obvious that the process of filling these posts would take time. There is a lack of well-drafted policy of recruitment and intermittent new guidelines and procedural changes have added to the delay,” Garg said.
“In my view, if the appointment process follows this pace, it would take 2-3 years to complete the whole process. I don’t think six months is enough to complete the process. The absorption of already teaching ad-hoc staff would have been better in completing the process of appointments early,” Garg further added.
On the condition of anonymity, another DU teacher said: “The UGC, DU or the Central government are not really very interested in completing the recruitment process. All they want is to look like they are working on this issue. Every day, the UGC is coming up with new guidelines or regulations which are causing delay in recruitments. Also, the court cases on the ‘roster system’ have contributed to the delay in recruitments. Besides this, the internal political slugfest among the teachers and administrators of DU and its colleges has caused much delay. The recruitment process in DU is not going to be over before 2021.”