Appointment of professor: Hunger strike at Savitribai Phule Pune University claiming malpractice

Calling the appointment process biased and corrupt, the two teachers have called for removal of the current assistant professor

Two aspirants for the post of the assistant professor at the department of English, Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) started a hunger strike on April 19, protesting the recruitment of the current assistant professor at the department.

Calling this process biased and corrupt, the two have called for removal of the current assistant professor (Sanket Wankhade/HT PHOTO)

Calling this process biased and corrupt, the two have called for removal of the current assistant professor. The duo identified as Kiran Manjare, a teacher at Sanghavi Kesari college, Chinchwad and Raj Nerkar, a teacher at DY Patil college, Akurdi have gone on a hunger strike.

“As per Supreme court directives, preference should be given to candidates with National Eligibility Test (NET) and State Eligibility Test (SET) qualifications, for the post of assistant professor. However the selected candidate has neither, instead she has a Ph D, which is the second preference. She is the sister of SPPU’s vice-chancellor’s personal assistant .This is a great loss as despite being selected and interviewed, the department chose to select the least qualified person,” said Manjare.

Majare and Nerkar have demanded for the new appointment to be cancelled, effective immediately and to set up a probe into the corruption and malpractices in SPPU’s selection process.

They have also demanded that the selection process must be fair and open. Interviews to be audio-visually recorded for the further references and evidences and all the necessary actions to be taken to curb the corruption and malpractices in the university.

This hunger strike comes in immediately after students wrote a letter to the vice-chancellor regarding unqualified assistant professors for the syllabus.