Shillong, Feb 23: The North Eastern Hill University Teacher’s Association (NEHUTA) on Friday staged a protest against the alleged insensitive attitude of the Vice chancellor SK Srivastava and his administration for allegedly denying timely promotion to large number of teachers.
The protest held in front of the Vice Chancellor’s office was participated by the teachers of the university who demanded the VC to immediately address the failure of the administration to conduct career advancement scheme (CAS) promotions for large number of young teachers and issues related to academic and financial health of university.
“We have decided to carry on the democratic protest until the VC clears the desk by completing all the promotions by March 31,†NEHUTA president Dr XP Mao said in a statement issued here.
He said that in last two and half years of the regime of the present VC Prof SK Srivastava, in complete violation of the UGC rules, promotions under CAS scheme that has to be conducted every six months was never conducted affecting the teaching-learning output.
“As a result NEHU’s rank has gone down in the assessment of various ranking agencies in the country.The current impasse is created as the NEHU administration kept a large number of teachers’ applications pending for promotions,†he said.
According to him, as per UGC norms there are three categories of Assistant Professors, namely stages 1, 2 and 3.
For promotions to these categories, the process of internal review is kept pending by the VC creating mess in teachers’ career and thereby grossly affecting the academic performance of the university.
He said the performance and standard of the University is going down rapidly because of non functioning of the various authorities of the University.
He also alleged that regular Executive Council meeting which is supposed to held at least once in every two months has not been held for quite some time turning the council into a fiefdom of the VC, as he only convened emergency meetings .
Nine time emergency meetings of Executive Council are called while statutory requirement of regular meeting is not fulfilled.
Meanwhile, Prof Mao also alleged that large scale bungling of finances in building and construction related work is going on, which have not yet come under scanner despite several representations to the central government.
It is a matter of great concern that the Vice-Chancellor as the Chairman of Executive Council and other statutory bodies is not conducting its meetings regularly as per provisions of the NEHU regulations.
Overall functioning of the university is grossly affected by such serious dysfunctioning of the statutory bodies and authorities of the university for which the VC remains solely responsible.
Since the VC is always out of Shillong, he is not interested in the affairs of the university and his table is always filled up with files pending.
In matters of seventh central pay commission for teachers and non-teaching employees of the university, the central government’s suggestion to raise 30% revenues from internal resources have created a difficult situation of charging higher costs from students and other sections of the society, which is a departure from declared objectives enshrined in NEHU Act.
“The NEHUTA highlighted this indirect pressure by the central government on public funded higher educational institution to adopt ways and means not entirely conducive for the students of the Northeastern India, who are its primary target group,†he said.
The Association strongly felt that because of gross failure and incompetence of the VC a large number of teachers are frustrated and demoralized.
Furthermore it is to be noted with deep anguish that in the last two and half years’ tenure of the present VC, important statutory positions such as Finance Officer, University Engineer and Registrar etc. are left vacant and thereby creating an administrative paralysis in the functioning of the premier university.
The Association resolved to carry on a non-violent peaceful movement against such gross malfunctioning of the university and decided to adopt all the necessary steps to bring the University out of its current state of deterioration and decline, he said.
