500 Posts vacant due to state-GU impasse
By - Shramana Ganguly

At least 500 posts are lying vacant in various colleges affiliated to Gujarat Universtiy just because of a lack of co-ordination between the state government and the university since over two years now.

While the university blames the state government for the delay in appointments at these posts, senior officials of the department of education blame the university for failing to furnish a revised version of their staff position as per UGC guidelines, which is instrumental in initiating the process.

Meanwhile, the state government stalled the permission to fill 50 per cent of vacancies of teaching staff last month until a proper line of action is followed. The staff problem at the university has been in news for quite some time now with more than 200 posts of academic staff and about 290 posts of non-academic staff at affiliated colleges lying vacant.

According to senior officials at the university, the vacancies resulted cumulatively over the years. The problem was increased by lack of appointments and state government’s refusal to issue no-objection certificates to colleges concerned to appoint employees. "The employee retrenchment policy of the government is hampering education," informed CU Shah Commerce College’s principal JS Patel.

Highly placed sources at the Gujarat University informed that apart from making themselves heard at the Joint Board of vice-chancellors at Gandhinagar, the management union and the principals’ union of the Gujarat University’s colleges also held a meeting with senior officials of the education department including minister of state for higher and technical education and the commissioner of higher education a fortnight ago, who reportedly promised to take up the issue by September.

A norms committee spearheaded by Gujarat University vice-chancellor Dr Naresh Ved has also been constituted to look into the revision of vacant posts of non-teaching staff at the universities of the state.

However, a concrete decision regarding appointment of teaching staff is no where in sight.The state government officials, however, present a different viewpoint. "While Gujarat University officials, college management association and principals’ association have been tabling the problem before the state government since quite some time now, their efforts are going waste since they are not following mandatory guidelines to attend to the problem," remarked secretary of higher and technical education Gauri Kumar while speaking to on Thursday. Another official emphasised, "The state government is committed to the cause of education, which is evident since teaching staff has been taken out of the economy order. We are not implementing the 20 per cent cut on appointment of academic staff. However, we stalled the appointments last month because the university has not yet reviewed faculty-wise requirement of teachers as per revised UGC norms of 1998."

The review of vacancies is a must since the appointments would have to be okayed by the finance department before the posts are filled.In this regard, it is significant to note that the university lacks an understanding of UGC norms.

"We are unsure about the teaching workload as per the norms and the way colleges concerned and the state government have been calculating it, is different a reason why no decision has been reached so far," said a senior official of the University adding, "Since it is up to the colleges to conduct the exercise, we have little to do."

Republished from The Asian Age