BHUBANESWAR: A day after BJD MP Prasanna Acharya raised the issue of large-scale vacancies in Central universities across the country including Odisha in Rajya Sabha, Congress MP from Koraput Saptagiri Ulaka drew the attention of the Centre to the severe shortage of teaching staff at Central University in Koraput, which has crippled its functioning.
“Central University of Odisha is the only university in the country which does not have a single professor,” Ulaka said in a letter to Union Minister for Human Resource Development Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Thursday.
Against 154 sanctioned posts of teaching staff including professors, associate professors and assistant professors, the university has only one associate professor and 16 assistant professors for 14 departments.
While all the 23 posts of professor are vacant, there is only one assistant professor in the university against a sanctioned strength of 43. Similarly, 16 posts of assistant professor have been filled against the sanctioned strength of 88.
Though the university does not have sufficient teaching staff, the authorities are not taking any step to mitigate the issue, he said and added that this requires urgent attention of the Centre to improve higher education in the tribal-dominated Koraput district. Ulaka said this is the situation even after 10 years of establishment of the Central University at Koraput.
The Central University of Odisha (CUO) was established at Koraput since the region had no university or any other national-level educational set up.
Ulaka said it was one of the 15 new Central Universities established by the UPA Government to address the concerns of ‘equity and access’ and increase access to quality higher education of people in less educationally developed districts which have a graduation enrolment ratio of less than the national average of 11 per cent. Earlier, the issue was also raised by BJD MP from Cuttack Bhartruhari Mahatab in the Lok Sabha.