CHENNAI: The government will redeploy 1,300 of the 3,500 employees of Annamalai University, who are found to be in excess to the current demand at the university, to other state universities or departments. According to sources, only 80 out of this 1300 are teaching staff and the remaining are non-teaching staff.
Higher education secretary C Samayamoorthy has directed the registrars of other universities, functioning under the department, to furnish details regarding requirements of non-teaching staff. The teaching staff will be redeployed in the new 15 government arts and science colleges opened this year.
This is not the first time that staff from Annamalai are redeployed to other institutions. Higher education officials shared that when the state government took control of the varsity in 2013, the university was struggling to manage its finances as it was heavily overstaffed. In a phased manner, around 1,800 teaching faculty and 2,900 non-teaching staff have been sent to other institutions on deputation.
As per the data submitted by the university to NIRF in 2025, the varsity has 1,183 regular teaching faculty.
Higher education officials said that redeployment of staff is need of the hour as, despite getting the maximum amount of grant, Annamalai is exhausting all its finances towards salary payment. “Only the junior teaching staff will be redeployed to other institutions,” Samayamoorthy told TNIE.
The budget documents of the higher education department revealed that in the financial year 2023-24, the varsity was allocated Rs 553.53 crore as grant, while in 2024-25 the grant was increased to Rs 565 crore (revised estimate). Though it has been reduced to Rs 450 crore (budget estimate) in 2025-26, the university still accounted for the lion’s share (33%) of Rs 1,353.08 crore earmarked by the department for financial assistance to state universities.
Officials of other state universities have lamented that the huge financial grant provided to Annamalai University is unfair. “To fulfill the needs of Annamalai University, other state universities are paying the price,” said a professor from the University of Madras citing that his varsity received only Rs 52 crore in this year’s budget allocation.
Expressing concern over the issue, noted academician SP Thyagarajan said the state government needs to chalk out a policy. “The situation is really worrying. While one university is functioning with 30% of its sanctioned staff, the other one has surplus staff. The state government needs to streamline things and come out with a policy to support the salary component in state universities. Along with it, the state government should provide additional funds to the universities to grow based on their performance,” said Thyagarajan.
The university, founded in 1929, was taken over by the state government in 2013 after it was marred with allegations of corruption.