ROURKELA: Shockingly, careers of nearly 180 senior faculty members of the prestigious National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) are jeopardised after the institute’s administration put them on probations despite their promotions.
Resentment is brewing among the affected faculty members who are frustrated with uncertainty apprehending the ‘illegal’ decision to make them vulnerable to termination, discontinuity in service and eventually hamper their post-retirement benefits.
They said it is in gross violation of rules and regulations prescribed by NIT Statute and Government of India (GoI). They pointed out that modified recruitment rules of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) vide Gazette notification and many clarifications that followed in 2017 were holistic in nature for recruitment and promotion.his additional criteria was never part of recruitment rules and advertisement. It was implemented unevenly and illogically without approval of the institute’s Board of Governors (BoG), the highest policy making body, they added.
They further pointed out the Department of Personnel and Training has issued a consolidated instruction on probation/ confirmation for all Central Government services vide its notification on July 21, 2014, which is also applicable to NIT-R. Probation is done at the time of recruitment for evaluation of performance. It is also applicable on promotion when an employee migrates from one Group to another with change in nature of duty and responsibilities, they stated.
In the Statue of NIT, the positions of Assistant Professor, Associated Professor and Professor are listed in the Academic Group. When the incumbent faculty members with six to 15 years of experience get promoted to higher grade-pay in the same Academic Group, there is no question of putting them on second probation as they had already completed it during recruitment, they asserted.
Similarly, the MHRD in its letter on November 30, 2017 has categorically defined any change to next higher grade-pay is promotion. Other NITs including NIT-Meghalaya led by Director Prof BB Biswal, who is originally a senior faculty member of NIT-R, have not put promoted faculty members under probation.
Retired NIT-R Director Prof SK Sarangi said, “It is ‘illegal’. Even the general thumb rule of the CCS (Service) Rule of GoI is that an employee cannot be put on second probation under the same employer.”
Chairman of NIT-R’s BoG and HR head of Aditya Birla Group Dr Santrupt B Misra could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts.
NIT-R makes it to Global Ranking
The NIT-R has again made it in the Group of 601-800 universities in the prestigious ‘Times Higher Education World University Ranking’. Informing this here on Thursday, the NIT-R authorities in a statement said the Times Higher Education World University Rankings is the only global performance tables who judge research-intensive universities on the basis of teaching, research, knowledge, transfer and international outlook. Out of 1,025 universities of the world, NIT-R has managed to secure a position in the list. Earlier, NIT had bagged the 126th position in Asia University Rankings 2018, it stated.