TEACHERS of Delhi University marched to Parliament Street on February 10, to draw attention to their demands related to their service conditions, including pensions, promotions, permanency in jobs and unwarranted recoveries from salaries. A key demand of the over two month long DUTA agitation is the one-time regulation for absorption of ad-hoc and temporary teachers which will allow the regularisation of the services of the thousands of temporary/ad-hoc teachers. Teachers have also been demanding the removal of the VC for the complete collapse of routine and administrative functioning in the university resulting in inordinate delays in permanent appointments and promotions.

Teachers in Delhi University have been denied promotion for many years, partly due to the frequent and ill-conceived changes in the career advancement schemes and partly due to the apathy of the administration. The issue of counting of past service for promotion has also not been resolved. Teachers are being harassed with unwarranted recoveries from their salaries on specious grounds.
Other issues such as the requirements for posts and infrastructure in the wake of the implementation of reservation for EWSs, service conditions of retired and serving teachers, the demand for the roll-back of the NPS and restoration of the old pension scheme to all are also part of the demands placed by teachers.
The protest programme also underlined the DUTA’s opposition to Draft New Education Policy 2019. Instead of strengthening existing public funded state and central universities through recruitment of teachers and creation of infrastructure, public-funding itself stands dismantled through the Draft NEP. For universities with a federal structure like ours, what is prescribed is a systematic dismantling of the same by way of autonomous institutions to be governed by private bodies with little or no control. The DUTA had earlier sent its feedback to the government raising concerns about the effect of commercialisation on the marginalised and deprived sections of society.