VIJAYAWADA: Andhra Pradesh government has decided to fill up all vacant posts of faculty members in each of 17 universities in about two to four months.
The decision comes in the wake of an order issued by the AP High Court.
Following the order, the state government has directed all its universities to take up rationalisation of teaching posts, including assistant professors, associate professors and professors, for arriving at the number of vacancies university-wise.
Simultaneously, it has taken up the exercise for filling jobs as per reservations provided for BC, SC, ST and other categories.
AP higher education authorities maintain that all vacancies in each university will be filled in about two to four months. They say a series of anomalies had risen in filling up of posts in the recruitment drive taken up by the previous Telugu Desam regime. They will have to thus start the entire process all over again.
The previously conducted screening test by Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) stands cancelled. This means those who qualified for that test will have to take the screening test again. Though the state government proposed to consider the candidature of the previously qualified candidates, the High Court did not permit the government to do so.
Moreover, the University Grants Commission had earlier issued a direction stating that a PhD degree will be a mandatory qualification for direct recruitment to the post of assistant professor in universities with effect from 01-07-2021. The state government will have to look into this issue too while taking up fresh recruitment of assistant professors.
The government has to further address the long-pending demand of ad hoc assistant professors working in universities since long. They have to be fixed into a time scale before going in for fresh recruitment drive as, otherwise, they could take to legal course, which would again stall the entire recruitment process.
AP Higher Education Council chairman K. Hemachandra Reddy said, “Following a recent order of High Court, the state government will take a fresh recruitment drive for all teaching positions in each of the 17 universities in AP in two to four months from now. There will be a fresh screening test for recruitment of assistant professors. We have to take care of some other issues too before going in for the recruitment drive to avoid further hurdles,” he underlined.
