NEW DELHI: As Delhi University teachers intensified their protest over the non-payment of salaries and other issues, the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called a meeting of all principals and chairman of governing bodies of the 12 fully-funded colleges to discuss their issues. The teachers led by the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) are protesting over non-payment of salaries and non-issuance of pensions and medical bills for the last five days. Intensifying their stir, thousands of teachers took to the streets on Monday. The “Adhikar Rally” was held from Delhi University VC office to the Chief Minister’s office against the government’s “arbitrary and unreasonable” stance towards these 12 colleges. Besides the teaching faculty, the march was largely joined by the staff, students and other non-teaching faculties and members of the Delhi University Principal Association (DUPA).
DUTA and DUPA also submitted a memorandum to the CM. “The protest is against the Delhi government’s arbitrary and unreasonable stance towards the twelve fully-funded colleges maintained by it. For more than a year now, employees have not been paid salaries and pensions on time, as grants have not been released on time for one or the other reason,” said Rajib Ray, DUTA president. The protesters also raised the slogans demanding to withdraw the recent resolution passed by the governing bodies of these colleges, in which it asked the colleges to not follow University Grants Commission (UGC) and guidelines and use the student and college development funds to pay the salaries to staffs.
“These are clear attempts to divert attention to extraneous issues and to mislead the public from the real issue of its attempt to wriggle out of its responsibility towards these public institutions and push them towards commercialisation,” said the teachers. Some protesting teachers also alleged that the AAP government is trying to dis-affiliate these 12 colleges from DU. A delegation of DUTA and DUPA met Acting Vice-Chancellor PC Joshi and Dean (Colleges) Balram Pani requesting action against the Delhi government’s order which has given additional charge of these colleges to Senior Administrative Offices.
Besides, DUTA and DUPA, the members of the Executive Council have also written to Joshi to include the matters of Administrative Matter (AO) and ‘Pattern of Assistance’ to agenda of the EC meeting on March 18. “After the appointment of AOs with additional charges for 12 Delhi Government College, the nominees of government are pushing aggressively a document called “Pattern of Assistance” for adoption by GBs. This Pattern of Assistance is in violation of the EC Resolutions and trying to establish two rules in one university,” said JL Gupta, EC member. Another EC member Seema Das said, “This is a grave attempt to dismember the university and impose the agenda of privatisation. Hence, we request you to include these two issues on the agenda of EC meeting as the crisis is deepening with each passing day.”