No univ teachers recruitment after 10 years of TS formation

Hyderabad: Hopes of the University Contract Assistant Professors demanding for regularisation of their services have dashed with the Election Commission notifying the schedule for the ensuing Assembly elections.

The contract assistant professors have so far hoped that the state government is positively considering its demand till the last minute. The contract faculty have been demanding the regularisation of 1340 teaching staff before the state government proposed the formation of a common recruitment board for the appointment of university faculty.

But, the university faculty recruitments hanging in balance for the past 10 years have not taken place, and the contract lecturers' hopes too have gone awry.

The contract lecturers argued that the recruitment through a common recruitment board would leave them and their families in a lurch. Against this backdrop they appealed to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao, to take a decision similar to that of the regularisation of contract junior lecturers and degree contract lecturers. The aggrieved contract lecturers cited that similar regularisation has been done in the states of West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Manipur state universities. If the state government finds it problematic, they seek to regularise their services in line with the Supreme Court's verdict in the Uma Devi case under a one-time settlement mode.

Meanwhile, the University Teachers Association Telangana state (UTATS) expressed its disappointment over the state government's failure to take any decision on redressing their grievances.

The teachers kept high hopes following B. Vinod Kumar, Vice-Chairman of Telangana State Planning Board, strongly sounded positive for the enhancement of age for the teachers in the Universities. He assured the TSUTA to place all the issues to the Telangana Government Authorities for a logical conclusion. He also conveyed that keeping the students away from Political participation is a conspiracy irrespective of ideology, and the repercussions of this are affecting society badly.

He further assured on the issues like Enhancement of Superannuation, Recruitment, OPS/OU CPS, UGC Arrears, Health Cards, Enhancement of University Budget, Implementation of AICTE regulations for Engineering Faculties, Implementation of UGC latest regulations for CAS promotions with one-time option, Uniformity in implementation of teacher-related regulations in all Universities (GO no. 15), Consideration of various types of past services with teacher-centric initiative etc.,).

Prof. G. Mallesham, President of TSUTA, said there is a need to move from representations to results. He urged for greater unity among all the University Associations in the interest of Teachers and support staff. It is high time to implement rules uniformly across all the State Universities. He conveyed that most State Universities are operating with a mere thirty per cent Faculty strength. Immense need for addressing issues of CPS for OU Faculty and support staff members. Implementation of Health card and release of UGC arrears.

Prof. Ch. Srinivas, General Secretary, TSUTA, noted the decline of the Student-Teacher Ratio, the lack of proper and uniform grievance redressal mechanisms in universities and proposed possible threefold measures (enhancement of superannuation – recruitment – service safeguard of contractual/part-time teachers). He reiterated for strengthening of Social Sciences for a just society and proposed a State Research Board under the aegis of TSCHE.

All these issues affecting the contract assistant professors and university teaching staff and the recruitment have once again taken a back seat with the election code coming into force, they said.