Despite Punjab govt guidelines, no new recruitment in aided colleges

Despite the guidelines issued by the Punjab government to colleges to fill up vacant posts of teachers in three phases, no new recruitment has been done since 2013.

The Punjab and Chandigarh college teachers’ union claims that even though the state government had imposed a ban on the recruitment of teachers and non-teaching staff only in government colleges in 2005, no recruitment has been done even in government-aided colleges since 1996.

Punjab and Chandigarh College teachers’ union president Jagwant Singh said, “At present, the number of vacancies in government and government-aided colleges is close to 3,000. In the universities of Punjab, the number of vacant posts is 1,500.”

He said that when the first phase of recruitment began, only 484 applications were received, revealing that the prolonged ban had left talented people discouraged.

Even though the strength of students in the state has increased, the number of teachers has not increased. At present the state has 55 government colleges and 13 new are being established. The number of government aided colleges is 136.

TK Goyal, director public instructions (colleges), Punjab, said, “In case of government colleges, there is a stay on recruitment by the Punjab and Haryana high court, due to which we are not able to follow the guidelines of the government. However, there is no ban on the recruitment of teachers in government-aided colleges. In case of the aided colleges, the appointment authority is with the management of the college and they submit the applications to us for the approvals and after that we send a nominee from our side at the time of an interview.”

High court order

In 2013, Jagwant Singh’s public interest litigation, seeking to lift the ban and fill up vacancies in accordance with the UGC regulations and 95% deficit grant-in-aid scheme that the Punjab and Haryana high court had called for a status report on the number of vacancies and the government admitted in the report that as on March 31, 2013 out of 3,566 sanctioned posts only 1,641 were filled up and 1,925 posts were lying vacant. The court wanted the government to fill up the posts at the earliest, after which, the government of Punjab issued guidelines to colleges to fill up the backlog in three phases by filling 484 posts by April 31, 2014 and another 484 posts by April 31, 2016 and the remaining 957 by March 2017.