Following pressure from Opposition MLCs, Higher Education Minister R.V. Deshpande agreed to refer the decision to increase work hours of college lecturers by six hours to the University Grants Commission (UGC).
The Higher Education Department had hiked the work hours from 16 to 22 for arts and commerce courses and from 20 to 26 for science streams. Opposition MLCs, including Basavaraj Horatti and Ganesh Karnik, argued that this was “unscientific and against UGC norms.” The UGC norms stipulate that a lecturer has to spend six hours a week in research, in addition to teaching hours. The Opposition said that including those six hours as teaching hours was in violation of norms.
