DUTA Letter to UGC, 23.12.2018

Date: 23.12.2018

To
Prof. D. P. Singh,
Chairman,
University Grants Commission,
Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg,
New Delhi – 110001

Sub: Regarding Stepping up of pay for teachers in colleges and universities

Dear Prof D.P. Singh,

We write this letter to draw your attention once again to the issue of stepping up of pay for teachers in colleges and universities. The matter has been raised in all our earlier meetings with you and in our memorandums and letters submitted from time to time.  As you are aware, this issue is one of the major anomalies of the VI Pay Revision for teachers, which has not been addressed even in the VII Pay Revision, either in the MHRD notification dated 02/11/2017 or in the gazette notification of UGC Regulations 2018 dt 18.07.2018. The issue pertains to the stepping up of pay of teachers to the level of their juniors (having same qualification) who hitherto have been drawing more salary than their seniors owning to an anomaly arising out of the implementation of the revised Pay Revision.

Affected teachers went to court for redressal on this matter and won their cases in 2012 from the Aurangabad bench of Maharashtra High Court, followed by another favourable judgement in Kerala High Court. To top it all, the Supreme Court gave a categorical judgement in favour of teachers on 17.11.2015, granting them the stepping up of pay to teachers to restore pay parity with their juniors having same qualification.

Despite getting every court judgement in their favour, the teachers in colleges and universities are yet to get justice from the Govt on the issue of stepping – up. Repeated representations by DUTA have found no response.

The implementation of the VII Pay Revision has compounded the problem further as there has been a point-to-point fixation of the teachers’ pay in the revised pay matrix based on the pre-revised pay on 01.01.2016. Hence if the matter of stepping up is not resolved right away in the form of a Notification/ Regulation by the UGC, then teachers will remain affected forever on account of pay fixation.

In the light of the above, we request you on behalf of DUTA to resolve the matter at the earliest so as to uphold the just and due rights of senior teachers.

With warm regards,