Calcutta University has constituted a committee to recruit contractual teachers for its four-year BTech programme.

The university’s syndicate, which met on Wednesday, decided to constitute the committee after teachers in the engineering and technology departments accused the authorities of a lack of planning while bringing all BTech seats into the four-year programme without appointing additional teachers or arranging adequate classrooms.

CU registrar Debasish Das said they took note of the crisis and formed the committee.

One of the points on the agenda of the syndicate meeting was a prayer from the head of the chemical technology department regarding the recruitment of contractual teachers as the department “faces a severe dearth of faculty members”.

Das said they have received feedback from the other departments about the faculty crunch. The committee has been asked to look into the issue urgently.

The syndicate has also asked the space committee to address the space crunch following the rise in the number of BTech seats.

The university increased the student count of the four-year BTech programme from 253 to 414 this year.

“We want the committee to speak to the teachers and let us know how many contractual teachers must be recruited. We want to appoint the teachers as soon as possible. Since the student count has sharply increased, the students will suffer if more teachers are not appointed,” registrar Das told The Telegraph on Thursday.

The first-year classes of the four-year BTech programme are taken by contractual teachers. However, the number of such teachers has not increased despite the rise in the seat count.

The university is not in a position to appoint permanent teachers in the absence of a full-term vice-chancellor.

“As long as the university continues to engage contractual teachers, it has to pay from its coffers, which is depleting. The university should have spoken to the education department to create substantive (permanent) posts since the launch of the four-year BTech programme in 2015,” said Sankhayan Choudhury, the head of the computer science department.