Delhi University asks colleges to form committees for appointment

The university had last initiated the appointment process for colleges in 2015 but the HRD ministry had asked the process to be put on hold as the then VCs tenure was going to end

Starting the process to fill vacant teaching positions, Delhi University has asked colleges to form a screening committee to shortlist candidates and a selection committee to conduct the interviews.

The university had last initiated the appointment process for colleges in 2015 but the HRD ministry had asked the process to be put on hold as then vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh’s term was due to get over in three months. (Anupam Prashant Minz/HT PHOTO)

The university has received 4.11 lakh applications for nearly 3,000 posts of assistant professors in about 63 colleges.

The university had last initiated the appointment process for colleges in 2015 but the HRD ministry had asked the process to be put on hold as the then vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh’s term was expiring in three months.

The hiring process comes after the University Grants Commission (UGC) introducted new regulations for hiring.

The posts have been lying vacant for years and ad-hoc and temporary faculty members are teaching students. In January, the university had started the process of hiring around 400 assistant professors in various departments.

In a letter to colleges, the assistant registrar said a core committee constituted by the university had completed centralised screening of applications of some subjects.

“The centralised screening has been completed for Arabic, Bengali, chemistry, electronics, food technology, instrumentation, philosophy, psychology and Urdu. Colleges, which have vacancies in these subjects, will now have to shortlist the candidates at their level,” a top DU official said.

“Thereafter the colleges have to send a formal request to the university for providing a nominee of the vice-chancellor, three experts and SC/ST/OBC/minority/women nominee to be associated with the selection committee,” the official said.

The official said interviews are likely to start in December end. “We are in the process of finalising the list. We will bring out these lists one by one,” the official said.

At its 94th annual convocation, president Ram Nath Kovind and human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar had stressed the need to fill vacant teaching positions in the university.

The university has faculty vacancies for the post of assistant professors in 41 departments such as zoology, statistics, Philosophy, Mathematics, Linguistics, Plant Molecular Biology, Electronic Science and Hindi.