New Delhi, Aug 16
Several teachers' bodies in Delhi University, have decided to constitute a Democratic United Teachers’ Alliance (D.U.T.A.) for the Delhi University Teachers Association election.
The Democratic Teachers Front (DTF), one of the largest teachers body in DU, said that D.U.T.A has decided to field Dr. Aditya Narayan Misra as its candidate for the post of DUTA President in the forthcoming elections. Misra belongs to the Aam Aadmi Party's teachers wing. The current DUTA President Professor A.K Bhagi is said to be close to the BJP.
Nandita Narayan, president of DTF, said that organisations like AADTA, CTF, DTI, DUFSJ, INTEC, ITF-SJ, JSM, SSM, Voice of DU Adhocs, and teacher activists such as Ratan Lal, Nawal Kishore, Sanoj Kumar, Maya John have come together for this initiative.
This unprecedented unity of teachers has come about in the backdrop of possibly the gravest challenges confronting the teachers, students and non-teaching employees of DU, secretary DTF Abha Dev Habib said.
There has been mass displacement of serving temporary and ad hoc teachers with the active connivance of the NDTF leadership and especially in institutions helmed by those who are part of the ruling dispensation. The institutional murder of Samarveer was possibly the abysmal low to which the state of affairs in DU have descended, she added.
According to Abha Dev, this setback to the quality of higher education has been compounded by the informal ban on temporary and ad hoc appointments of teachers and a proliferation of heightened precarity through guest teachers appointments. Besides, many teachers have had their promotions delayed or denied and the release of the UGC Anomaly Committee Report seems to have been deliberately delayed to reinforce this denial and delay, she added.
The DTF said that they will support D.U.T.A. for the post of president and will field the teacher activists for the DUTA Executive. Abha Dev Habib, Manoj Kumar, Rudrashish Chakraborty and Sanjeev Kaushal will be the DTF candidates for the executive.
Habib said that the hike in the fees of students will exacerbate the exclusionary trends that were initiated by the ill-conceived CUET. On the other hand, the dependence of public higher educational educational institutions on private corporates is sought to formalised through the dominance of corporates through the Board of Governors framework that will replace the current system of Governing Bodies. In this light, the reluctance of the DU administration to form the governing bodies of colleges administered by the Delhi Government is a foretaste of the move to let private corporates take over units of DU.
All these grave challenges which are different dimensions of NEP were being unloaded on the teachers, students and non-teaching employees of the University of Delhi. The current leadership has completely betrayed the teachers by brazenly colluding with these deleterious moves, she said.
DU authorities have packed the AC subcommittee for academic affairs with NDTF members whose only role is to subvert statutory powers of CoCs, Departments and Faculties, and impose unacademic changes in syllabi in keeping with their agenda of saffronisation, she added.
The DTF teachers of DU have decided that public higher education cannot be redeemed if the current leadership is successful in its aim of converting the teachers’ collective into a patronage dispensing tool to further NEP through undemocratic demobilisation.
The DTF said that along with all constituents of D.U.T.A they are determined to reclaim DUTA as an organisation of the struggle of teachers and will work unitedly to elect Dr. Aditya Narayan Misra as the next DUTA President.
The DTF also appealed to teachers to support the DTF Executive panel to the DUTA.
