JNTU-A constituent College Denies Resumption Of Work To 30 Faculty Members Despite HC Order
The college cites the ground that they refused to sign fresh agreement forms.
Vijayawada:A refusal to reinstate 30 adhoc assistant professors in JNTU-Anantapur’s constituent engineering college at Kalikiri, despite a High Court order, is affecting hundreds of students planning to do undergraduate engineering courses in the new academic year.
The engineering college has 60 adhoc and 11 regular faculty members. Of them, 30 are not being allowed to resume work from the new academic year beginning June 3, 2025. The college cites the ground that they refused to sign fresh agreement forms.
Out of the 30 faculty members, 22 handling technical subjects claimed that they were being protected by a 2018 AP HC order allowing their continuation in service. Similarly, eight faculty members teaching humanities also claimed the same on the basis of an HC order issued in 2020.
As the JNTU-A authorities did not allow these 30 faculty members to resume work, they moved the AP HC on June 16. The court issued an interim order on June 20, asking the college to immediately allow them resume work.
On June 27, the HC issued a final order asking the faculty members to give their performance appraisals to the university authorities and resume their work. But, the university did not implement this HC order too.
With this, out of 30 faculty members, six belonging to SC communities approached the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, alleging caste-based discrimination towards them. The commission subsequently served notices to the university vice chancellor and registrar on July 9. The aggrieved 30 also communicated their grievance to the office of the President of India on July 6, which in turn referred the issue to AP’s chief grievance officer in the chief minister’s office.
In response, the university authorities issued a circular on July 15, asking the aggrieved to attend their performance review and submit their joining reports.
The 30 faculty members wanted to submit their joining reports as on June 20, the day of issue of interim order by AP HC, to avoid a loss of pay. However, the university authorities insisted that they should resume work from July 15, the day of issue of the circular.
This created a logjam between the faculty members and the university authorities. The issue remains unsolved. The worst-hit by this are the students, whose classes were badly affected from June 30.
The university is threatening to cancel even the lab sessions, citing the shortage of faculty members.
A silver line is that the high court is likely to take up the hearing of a contempt of court petition filed by the faculty members on Thursday.
A senior faculty member said, “We have been working on an ad hoc basis in the college since its inception in 2013. We are being looked down upon. We seek the intervention of the state government to resolve the issue.”
JNTU-A constituent engineering college, Kalikiri, principal M Venkateswara Rao said, “In response to the AP high court’s direction, we issued a circular asking the 30 faculty members to submit performance appraisal and joining report from July 15. But, they insist on doing so from June 20.”
“We are concerned about the students’ academics and are awaiting the HC order on the contempt of court petition,” he added.
