The Left-affiliated Democratic Teachers’ Front emerged victorious by a big margin in the Delhi University Teachers’ Association elections, the results of which were declared here on Friday. It bagged the post of president and all its four candidates for the post of Executive Council also won. The DTF had been at the forefront of the campaign against the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) in Delhi University.
“This is a validation of our efforts and also the faith shown by the teachers in the sincerity of all our struggles. This is also the mandate given by those who have simply expressed their anger and resentment against the policies of the administration, which has humiliated them time and again by keeping them out of key decisions,” said the new DUTA president, Nandita Narain, who polled 2,705 votes, 786 more than her nearest rival. She was followed by the Academics for Action and the Indian National Teachers’ Congress (INTEC) joint candidate Ashwini Shankar who polled 1,919 votes of the total of 6,475 votes.
The prime agenda of the DTF will be to seek appointments for teachers. “Most importantly, we will be calling for the Executive Council to meet again and to change the selection committee composition. According to regulations, there must be two representatives nominated by the Vice-Chancellor and two by the Governing Body, however, this time all the four have been chosen by the V-C,” said Ms. Narain, listing other anomalies that the new DUTA was all geared up to tackle.
“The screening system for interviews is unfair to ad-hocs and the points system for recruitment is discriminatory and creates a distinction between college and department teachers. The recent University Grants Commission regulations state that principals should have a tenure of five years, but the university is trying to follow the old system by making it a life tenure. All this is illegal and we intend to follow up with all of them,” she said, adding that the DUTA would not let go of their struggle to roll back the new four-year undergraduate course and the semester system.
In the elections to DUTA’s 15-member executive panel, the INTEC/ AAD alliance walked away with eight seats, DTF won four seats, Independents won two while the right-leaning National Democratic Teachers’ Front got one. This time the election turnout was the highest in recent years at 72.86 per cent.
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