The rollback of the Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) has rendered several ad hoc teachers jobless as colleges of the University of Delhi are holding fresh interviews to hire ad hoc teachers. However, the old ad hoc teachers who were hired for teaching foundation courses have been asking for their redeployment instead of removal. The university, on the other hand, has said that since the number of teachers required is now less after the scrapping of courses, fresh interviews are a must to avoid irregularities or possible “Pick and Choose” attempt.
The university had hired a lot of teachers in 2013 on ad hoc basis to teach foundation courses. A lot of these teachers were also teaching other modules. However, the number of teachers appointed supersedes the required number of teachers under the three-year programme. “When a stipulated number of teachers are required for a particular course, there is no need to have more teachers. For example if there are three teachers for Computer Science and only one is needed, we have to cut down,” said a source in the university.
According to an official in the Dean Students Welfare office, this downsizing has resulted in fresh interviews because all teachers cannot be kept and choosing a select few from them is biased. “We can’t let a few stay and ask the others to leave. If we do this, fingers will be pointed at us for being prejudice and unfair. Thus, with interviews they will all be given a fair chance,” said a university official.
The teachers who were serving as ad hoc are worried that they would lose out on two months of summer vacation salary. “In the worst case scenario also our jobs were going to stay. However, with the rollback of FYUP, it’s all changed. We don’t want fresh interviews to take place because we may be removed and lose the two month salary that we’d been expecting all this while,” said an ad hoc teacher from Ramanujan College who did not want to be named because of the fear of being sacked.
Meanwhile, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked the DU to send them details of all ad hoc, guest and contractual faculty that have been appointed so far. According to a DU official, the UGC refers to appointment of teachers as per their rules. The UGC rules state that the appointment of ad hoc teachers should be done in the same manner as that of permanent teachers which is not the case in DU. While the UGC has asked DU to follow only their devised pattern, the issue has not yet been resolved.