Srinagar: Scores of contractual college teachers held a protest at the press enclave, Srinagar to invite the attention of the administration towards their traumatized situation.
Protesting under the banner Jammu and Kashmir College Contractual Teachers Association (JKCCTA) the teachers said that the faculty working on academic arrangement basis have been subjected to the utmost humiliation by the Higher Education Department of Jammu and Kashmir.
It is the academic arrangement faculty working in the different colleges of the Jammu and Kashmir UT who have kept the skeletal of higher education alive from decades, they said.
The exclusion of Academic Arrangement from (CIVIL SERVICES SPECIAL PROVISIONS ACT, 2010) aggravated the faculty and after witnessing this humiliation and sensing job insecurity some of faculty members knocked the doors of judiciary in 2014 and zero in attention of the authorities towards their grievances extended the number to thousands, the protestors said.
The J&K High Court of J&K issued a status quo (interim relief that the position of the petitioner must not be disturbed) till the final disposal of the case. The department was going well with the status quo of the candidates and was maintaining the position of the petitioners and released their salaries till July 2019, they added.
Post July 2019 period according to the protesting contractual teachers has bee has been very tough for them and the present challenge of Covid-19 has added to their miseries.
They said the court from time to time issued directions to the department in order to release the salaries of the faculty and maintain their status as per Guidelines 78-HE of 2018 dated 08-02-2018. But to our surprise the department never abided by those orders and directions, which highlight the whimsical approach and highhandedness of the Higher Education Department.
But our salaries have not released. Despite working on court orders higher education department left no stone unturned in torturing the academic arrangement faculty. Whether, it was replacing the candidates through unjustifiable transfers, or mentioning them as surplus, they said.
The protesters said as 15-02-2021 was a landmark in the educational diasporas of the country in general and Kashmir in particular because from this date government of India decided to go for offline classes after almost one year of the deadliest pandemic and as the faculty approached the colleges to resume their duties after winter vacations, the principals didn’t allow them to work and not entertained their presence in the colleges and harassed them by mentioning that they have verbal orders from the director Colleges to not allow the contractual faculty to resume their duties.
At this point of time the Nodal Principal Kashmir Division while sending the new academic arrangement faculty to the different colleges of Kashmir Division is directly hitting the faculty working on court orders and are replacing them with same set of arrangement which is contrary to the directions of the supreme Court of the country.
The Association requested the LG Manoj Sinha, his advisor Rajiv Rai Batnagar, Secretary Higher Education Sushma Chauhan and Chief Justice of J&K High Court, to intervene in the matter and come to their rescue.
