The Delhi University (DU) teachers who have been boycotting the evaluation process for undergraduate exams on Thursday decided to give up their strike partially.
The protesters have exempted the final-year batch, which is also the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) batch, from the evaluation boycott.
The teachers have been protesting against the latest gazette notification of the University Grants Commission (UGC) that increases work hours of permanent teachers and leaves no room for ad-hoc teachers in the university. They decided to call off the strike after the government decided to roll back the decision of increasing work hours.
“The massive united and principled struggle by the DUTA, with the support of students and teachers’ associations across the country, has forced the government to backtrack from the disastrous policy of irrational increase in teaching hours. The government was left with no defence in the face of the massive campaign against the anti-education nature of the workload policy,” a statement issued by the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) read.
At a press conference on Wednesday, UGC announced that: “There will be no change in workload. An assistant professor will have to teach 16 hours per week, associate professors and professors will have to log in 14 hours of teaching. Direct teaching hours will include tutorials and hours spent on practicals/project supervision.”
DU teachers, however, are demanding a rollback of Academic Performance Indicator (API), which is why they have partially called off their strike and are continuing to boycott 1{+s}{+t}year and 2{+n}{+d}year examination paper evaluation and admission processes.
“It is, however, unfortunate that the government has decided to continue with the API-based promotion scheme (PBAS), despite its proven adverse impact on teaching, learning, research, and the service conditions of teachers by large-scale denial of promotions for the last eight years,” the DUTA statement added.
