Teachers of Jadavpur University have written to education minister Bratya Basu demanding that research scholars who are vaccinated be “allowed on campus immediately”.
According to them, research laboratories must start functioning as soon as possible as lab-based subjects “cannot be taught online”.
The campus has been shut since March 2020 as a precaution against Covid.
The letter that was mailed to Basu on Monday said: “You might be aware that instruments worth several hundred crores are lying idle at our university’s laboratories for a long time. As a result, many instruments are no longer functioning properly. If these high-value instruments are not used even for a single day, it leads to losses of lakhs of rupees, which is sheer wastage…. Therefore research scholars who are vaccinated must be allowed on campus immediately.”
Parthapratim Roy, the general secretary of the teachers’ association, said research scholars in institutes like IIT Kharagpur and NIT Durgapur are being recalled as online teaching cannot be an alternative to the lessons that are taught in laboratories.
“Their (research scholars) degrees are incomplete. The machines are depreciating. A good number of the students have taken both doses of the vaccine. So, the labs must be thrown open to them,” said Roy, an associate professor of the physics department.
The IIT Kharagpur Teachers’ Association wrote to Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan last month demanding recall of the research scholars in increasing numbers.
The Bengal government allowed reopening of 185 polytechnic colleges and 282 ITIs from August 30.
A JU teacher said exposure to the lab for a research scholar is as important as it is for a polytechnic college student.
The need for practical classes prompted the JU teachers to demand that final-year BSc-MSc and BTech-MTech students be allowed to attend in-person classes in batches after getting their vaccine doses.
Repeated calls to education minister Basu and education secretary Manish Jain, to whom a copy of the letter was sent, from this newspaper went unanswered.
A department official said the state government was working on a plan to reopen colleges and universities after Puja in November, if the Covid situation remains under control.
“Polytechnic colleges have much fewer students compared with universities. JU alone cannot be allowed to reopen. So, we are treading with caution,” he said.
VC gheraoed
Students of JU confined vice-chancellor Suranjan Das and several teachers and officials in their offices till late on Monday, demanding that the university initiate steps to reopen the campus. The gherao was lifted at midnight.