Recruitment process questioned

Updated on: Monday, November 02, 2009

Santiniketan: What should be the minimum qualification of a person who wants to teach at a university? Common sense says he or she should have at least a postgraduate degree. But a woman with only a higher secondary degree ‘taught’ Visva-Bharati students for around seven years.

The agitators sit on a dharna at Chhatimtala; (right) V-C Rajat Kanta Ray, against whom they are agitating, also sat nearby, ‘waiting for a message from Maharshi Debendranath Tagore’
Believe it or not, she came through a ‘high-level selection committee’ set up by the university according to its statute. Finally, in June 2004, the maths teacher’s real qualification was exposed during a probe. It was found that she had got through with fake certificates. And, not a single original copy of her certificates was in possession of the university authorities; only some attested copies were in her service records.

The then registrar of the university, S K Sarkar, lodged a police complaint against her following an internal probe. She was sacked and arrested. The case is still pending in court. The vice-chancellor under whose tenure she was appointed was also arrested on charges of supporting ‘fake documents’. The case was first of its kind at V-B, which exposed the hard realities of the recruitment system in this globally-acclaimed institution.

But this was not a one-off incident. A number of appointments — both academic and non-academic — made during this vice-chancellor still raise questions. Despite a statute regarding recruitment and several recruitment committees comprising veteran academic experts, several irregularities were found subsequently. University sources said during this V-C’s tenure, two posts of readers were allegedly ‘broken up’ into four posts of lecturers to appoint four persons. This is not permissible according to UGC norms.

In the recent past, a number of higher officials have been posted “hastily”. The agitating V-B employees specifically mentioned some of those. But V-B PRO, Amitabha Chowdhury, denied any irregularities in appointments, though he admitted to “some unwilling” mistakes in creation of posts. “The selection panels were formed following UGC rules,” he insisted.

There are other anomalies too. Currently, there are 7,000 students at V-B, around 650 teachers and 1,800 employees in all. The teacher-student ratio in many departments is abnormally low. In Patha Bhavan, for example, the number of students is around 1,050 and teachers 61. The UGC had strictly instructed the university authority to make the teacher:student ratio at least 1:20. That in effect means that either the university authority has to abolish the posts or increase the number of students. Also, teachers, irrespective of sections, enjoy the same pay scale. UGC had also asked for gradation of teachers’ pay scale.

Recruitment process questioned

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