Demanding that a fresh syllabus be formed, Economics teachers in Delhi University, who were already upset at the severe dilution in the course content of the new four-year undergraduate course, have now written to the department head alleging that university regulations were blatantly bypassed while forming the Committee of Courses and therefore the newly-approved syllabus be considered “null and void”.
“When the constitution of the Committee of Courses is faulty and illegal…and the entire course structure and contents of the Economics courses passed by this committee without concurrence with the democratic opinion of the college teachers and in fact in complete secrecy and confidentiality from them, the whole exercise of “passing the course structure” is null and void and has no locus standi ,” said the letter signed by several teachers from colleges like Ramjas College, Kirori Mal College and Shri Ram College of Commerce, among others.
One major allegation supporting the illegality of the “Committee of Courses” is that “seniority by rotation” in the formation of the committee has not been adhered to, and that the same people have figured time and again in the course committee.
The letter went on to add: “This move apart from being an illegality in itself also denies the legitimate right of some others, who should have been in these committees instead. It is therefore obvious that there are major violations of University regulations. We are pointing out the anomalies in case of certain individuals because the anomalies in their cases are quite apparent to us. We do not have an access to the seniority list of all the college teachers, so we are not in position to make any conclusion about the validity of other members’ selection to the committee.”
The teachers have alleged that they had pointed out these irregularities earlier but they were ignored. They are now demanding that a new committee adhering to all the norms be formed. “We request you to withdraw the entire exercise of ‘passing’ these courses and first constitute the CoCs according to the rules of the University.”
On the other hand, the university announced that the syllabus for “Social Work and African Studies” had been released.
Meanwhile, murmurs of dissent were also heard in some of the individual staff college meetings. “The faculty members expressed their unhappiness with the manner in which four-year undergraduate programme is being bulldozed and its implications on students and teachers,” said Miranda House teacher Abha Dev Habib.
