DUTA Press Release; 6 February 2018

                                                                                                                     
Thousands of teachers went on Strike and converged for a spontaneous Mass Protest on Tuesday, 6 February 2018, against the DU Administration’s continued evasion of transparency in permanent appointments and failure to ensure justice for many long-serving ad-hoc teachers who had hoped to be regularised through the recently concluded selection process in the Faculty of Law and Dept. of Education. The DUTA Strike will continue tomorrow in protest against the negative recommendations of the Pay Revision Notification and the 70-30 sharing-arrangement on costs that the Government is insisting on. After the Budget announcements, there is palpable anger in the teaching community with the realisation that the Government is adamant on drastic cost-cutting and shifting to loan-based expansion of educational infrastructure. Thousands of teachers are stuck without any promotions and pensions. The Pay Revision notification has ignored the suffering of these sections.

The University Administration has failed to come up with an objective criteria for marking in the 50:30:20 weightage formula (as required by UGC Regulations) and has left the whole marking process to the discretion of selection committees, thus making a mockery of the weightage system itself. Additionally, it has not even shared the full minutes of selection committees, with the marksheets of the selected candidates, while seeking statutory approval for the appointments in the Executive Council.

The DUTA reiterates its demand for regularisation of long-serving temporary and ad-hoc teachers as their contribution to the teaching-learning and academic growth of departments and colleges across DU cannot be ignored. Despite permanent appointments not taking place for many years, DU and its constituent departments and colleges have continued to deliver excellence, partly due to the stability provided by its hard-working temporary and ad-hoc faculty. The DUTA also wants the University to declare a completely transparent criteria for marking on 50 (Academic Record and Research) and 30 (Domain Knowledge/Teaching Skills) and make mark-sheets of candidates public so that the selection process is not subjected to rigging.

The DUTA also expresses disappointment at the University Administration’s failure to speed up the process of permanent recruitment and adhere to a reasonable time-frame for the completion of the entire process of filling up more than 2 thousand advertised vacancies across colleges and departments.