Teachers at Rabindra Bharati University met officiating vice-chancellor Subhro Kamal Mukherjee on Monday and urged him to start the process of filling vacant teaching posts for the sake of smooth running of the four-year undergraduate programme.
The university has only 124 teachers against the sanctioned strength of 199.
The 75 vacant posts could not be filled as the governor, who is chancellor of RBU and all other state-aided universities, has not named his nominee for the selection committee that will screen teaching job aspirants, the teachers alleged.
Calls, text messages and emails from this newspaper to governor C.V. Ananda Bose failed to elicit any response.
Now that the university has an officiating VC, the teachers said, he was approached so he could consult the chancellor and do the needful to ensure that the 75 posts are filled at the earliest.
Debabrata Das, secretary of the RBU teachers’ association, said: “We want the vacancies to be filled at the earliest so the four-year undergraduate programme can run efficiently. In fact, we would need teachers beyond our sanctioned strength to run such an exhaustive programme at the undergraduate level. But at this moment we have requested the VC to take steps to fill the vacancies.”
The selection committee cannot be set up if the chancellor does not send his nominee, said Das, who was among the teachers who called on the VC. “The VC said he would look into our demands.”
Mukherjee, who took over as officiating VC of RBU on Friday, declined comment.
A member of the teachers’ association said there was a need to create adequate infrastructure for the four-year undergraduate programme and this would be taken up with the officiating VC later.
The RBU teachers’ association had on May 8 written to chancellor Bose, requesting him to ensure that the institution gets adequate funds for the implementation of the four-year programme.
An official in the education department said the process to recruit teachers could not start at a number of universities, including RBU, because the chancellor is yet to name his nominees for the screening committee of the respective universities.
“This has been happening since the time Jagdeep Dhankhar was Bengal’s governor. As he got into a fight with the state government, the process of naming the chancellor’s nominee got stalled. There has been no change since C.V. Ananda Bose took over,” he said.
“Shortage of teachers would make implementation of the four-year programme difficult,” the official said.
RBU’s officiating VC, who was Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, initiated on Monday the process to shortlist adjudicators for PhD theses.
Only a VC can shortlist adjudicators. RBU did not have a VC for a month before Mukherjee took over.