Even after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for introducing ‘bio-metric’ attendance to maintain the transparency and accountability of the Government employees posted in different fields across the nation, there are some sectors which do not maintain the attendance of its employees either manually or digitally. One of these is the ‘Ambedkar University of Delhi’, ‘The Indian Law University’ and ‘Delhi University’ which do not have any record of its teaching staffs, reveals a Right to Information (RTI).
A former student of Delhi University and an Advocate has filed an RTI with both Indian Law University and Ambedkar University of Delhi to provide a copy of the attendance sheet of its teaching staff (professor, assistant professors, teachers assistants and others) maintained digitally or manually.
The Indian Law University, one of the prestigious law schools replying to the RTI query said, “This is third party information” and the Ambedkar University of Delhi funded by the Delhi Government said, “The attendance of Faculty member is not maintained.
However, when The Pioneer tried to contact, none from the university administration responded to calls and messages.
I may be noted that these two universities are not the exceptions that lag behind in maintaining transparency and accountability of its teaching staff but there are many other prestigious varsities in the National Capital such as Delhi University (DU) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) which do not maintain attendance of its faculty members. The teachers union of JNU and DU have been strident critics of the digital (bio-metric and online) attendance for years since the bio-metric attendance system was made compulsory by the central government in 2014.
“The public officials should not shy away from allowing information’s pertaining to attendance to be publicly disclosed. Even otherwise, attendance pertains to public activities and has a direct bearing on taxpayer’s money in every manner. When the attendance sheets of students are publicly declared, notions of justice requires equality guaranteed by the constitution of India,” said Shashi, a lawyer by profession who has filed the RTI to get the information of the attendance of the faculty members of these universities.