DUTA Letter to UGC, 23.7.2014

July 23, 2014

This is to bring to your notice that the University, in the meeting of the AC and EC held on 19th July, 2014, decided to refer the issue of the syllabus of the compulsory paper on Environmental Studies to a committee. In effect, this means that the paper would not be offered to students in this semester. While there can be no objections to re-examining the UGC recommended syllabus for this paper, this cannot be an excuse for not offering the paper in this semester itself. Modifications can be worked out and implemented later.

If this paper is offered, most of the Science teachers who have been displaced due to rollback of FYUP can be retained for this semester.

As it is, the delay on the part of the University to undertake the exercise of restructuring courses for the batch of FYUP, has led to much confusion and chaos. Had the AC meeting been called to initiate restructuring soon after rollback of FYUP was announced on 27th June, these issues could have been sorted out much before the commencement of the session.

I would request you to take steps to ensure that the paper on EVS, held as mandatory by the Hon’ble Supreme Court, is introduced from this semester itself. Half the students can offer it in this semester and half in the next. Offering it only in the even semester would put an unrealistic load on classroom and teacher requirement in that semester.

The other major violation that I would like to point out is that the students of second year Maths Hons and B.Com Hons have been denied a choice of concurrent/allied subject. Instead, they are being forced to study papers from within their own discipline in the slot for allied subjects.

In particular, Maths Hons students, who traditionally(both before and during FYUP) had a choice of disciplines such as Economics, Philosophy, Physics and Chemistry, are being forced to study Operations Research (which is part of mathematics) in that slot. This has impoverished their degree and deprived them of a wholesome education. This will also lead to a loss of posts in Economics, Philosophy, Physics etc as their workload will decrease. Such arbitrary, unacademic and whimsical functioning of the University will lead to further chaos in the university and continued victimisation of a guinea pig batch. Please advise the university authorities that depriving students of 2013 batch of the choice of allied subjects that was part of the package promised to them, and has been an integral feature of both the pre-FYUP as well as the FYUP course, is neither academically nor legally sustainable.

There have been other serious violations in approving “courses” in the AC on 19th July, such as that of bypassing recommendations of Committees of Courses and Faculties, whereas Ordinance XIV B stipulates that the AC can pass courses only based on the recommendations of the CoC and Faculties. We would request you to bring these continuing violations to the notice of the full Commission, for which we can provide supporting documents.

With regards,

Nandita Narain
(DUTA President)