Osmania University students stage dharna

HYDERABAD: Osmania University students staged a massive dharna before the Arts College on the campus on Saturday and burnt minister for secondary education Kolusu Parthasarathi in effigy for putting junior lecturers recruitment notification on hold.

The students even alleged that the minister had taken bribes from contract lecturers for postponing the fresh recruitment process and threatened to lay siege to Secretariat if the government did not issue a fresh notification.

They staged the protest following Parthasarathi's written assurance not to take up fresh recruitment until the issue of contract lecturers is resolved. Following the assurance, the AP Government Degree and Junior Colleges Contract Lecturers Association called off their nineday long strike on Friday.

The association launched the strike on February 2 demanding regularisation of their posts and service. The minister's assurance put the proposed notification for recruiting 5,500 junior lecturers on hold for at least now. G Veeraswamy, a research scholar, said that they had been waiting for the notification for years but the minister dashed their hopes.

About 9,500 lecturer posts were lying vacant in 820 government junior colleges in the state, he said and demanded immediate issuance of notification for filling up all the vacancies. At the same time, he said, students were not opposed to the contract lecturer's demand.

B Sriram, an MA (Economics) student, said the government had been encouraging privatisation of Intermediate education instead of setting up more government colleges.

"This is keeping poor students away from higher education, particularly in the Telangana region," he said.