The government has asked central universities to freeze teacher recruitment until "complete lifting" of the lockdown, a move welcomed by JNU teachers who have long been accusing varsity authorities of irregularities in faculty appointments.

In a letter on Tuesday to the vice-chancellors of all the central universities, the education ministry said that filling “general posts including teaching and non-teaching posts in central universities may be deferred till complete lifting of lockdown”.

The universities were recruiting teachers entirely through online interviews because of the Covid crisis. The JNU teachers’ association had written several times to the government during the pandemic, alleging large-scale “illegalities” in the faculty appointments and laying the blame on vice-chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar.

The teachers’ association has long been making the same allegation and several teachers have petitioned Delhi High Court against particular appointments over the past several years. But the government has hardly ever acted on the teachers’ and students’ multiple complaints against the VC, who is perceived to be close to the ruling dispensation.

A teachers’ association member described Tuesday’s ministry letter — which cited no explanations for the directive — as a “relief, at least for the time being”.

According to the association, the JNU administration has been interfering in the teacher appointment process in various ways, for instance, by changing the advertised eligibility criteria just before the selection.

The teachers’ main complaint is that Kumar has been violating rules by inviting subject experts of his own choice as members of the selection committees that interview the candidates.

Under JNU’s rules and statutes, each of its centres or schools recommends a panel of experts for possible inclusion in its teacher selection committee. Once statutory bodies like the university’s academic council and executive council have approved the names, the VC invites any three of them to join the selection committee.

However, the current dispensation has invoked a 1997 executive council resolution that authorised the VC to add names to the list of recommended experts and get them approved by the executive council. The teachers say this resolution applied only to the year 1997.

Last year, Delhi High Court passed an interim order allowing the VC to add names to the list but requiring their approval from the academic council and the executive council.

Since most of the members of both councils are nominated by the VC, deans and chairpersons, the VC gets all his agendas approved, a teachers’ association member said.

“The VC calls experts of his choice these days. He does not include anybody from the list recommended by the centre or the school. Some of these experts have hardly published any paper in peer-reviewed journals,” the teacher said.

Rajeev Kumar, a computer science teacher at JNU, said faculty recruitment was not urgent enough to be conducted during the pandemic.

“Faculty recruitment should not be short-circuited, as is currently being done,” he said.

“A faculty member, once appointed, stays on for the next two to four decades. Any compromise with faculty selection may therefore severely affect the academic environment.”

Rajeev Kumar said that although the National Education Policy had recommended abolition of the MPhil course, JNU was recruiting teachers on the basis of the posts sanctioned for its integrated MPhil-PhD course rather than recalculating the number of required teachers after excluding the MPhil-related posts.

“Instead of faculty recruitment, a VC’s time may be more meaningfully devoted to higher-priority tasks such as improving the infrastructure for online teaching and assessment, rescheduling the academic calendar, conducting admissions and calling the students back to the campus,” he said.

An email sent to the JNU vice-chancellor and registrar seeking their reaction to the allegations of illegalities in teacher appointment has remained unanswered.

The Central University of Rajasthan had sought permission for an online interview to recruit teachers. The ministry has advised it to wait for now.