The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) notes that the issue of a 5-point agenda for an emergency meeting at the eleventh hour is patently illegal and unheard of. Emergency meetings are single agenda meetings while the present meeting, to be convened on July 21, is to discuss five items. Hence, this kind of a meeting reflects the VC’s sly intention to turn the Academic and Executive councils of the university into mere rubber stamps, expected to authorize and extend his dictatorship. Even as pressing issues like the alarming number of teaching vacancies across colleges are never discussed in meetings, the VC has chosen to only concentrate on bringing in a dubious set of ‘reforms’ without any reasonable discussion on their desirability or sustainability. The DUTA also notes that such manner of bringing in significant restructuring of academics deprives the Academic Council of the opportunity for wider consultations with Departments and the academic community at large. The DUTA has always defended the teachers’ enshrined right to participate in democratic processes of academic decision-making within the University, and hence appeals to the Vice-Chancellor to desist from further compromising on the dignity and prestige of the University and destroying its best practices for his own personal and political gains. In this light, the DUTA registers its staunch opposition to the two emergency meetings of the AC and EC, scheduled for July 21 and 22 respectively, as the same have been convened in an irregular manner with illegal agenda.
The DUTA has convened an emergent meeting of its Executive Committee at 11 A.M. on July 20, to consider the above development and decide on the appropriate course of action.
S.D. Siddiqui, Secretary Amar Deo Sharma, President
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