The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration’s claim of approving 108 promotions – the highest in the history of the university – under present Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit has been refuted by the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA).
Further, the association also announced that it would stage a protest on November 17 to shed light on the pending promotions.
The JNUTA, in a statement, alleged that the number of promotions still pending, as well as the years in which the select promotions were made, were not revealed by the administration of JNU, says PTI.
The statement, issued on Thursday, November 9 read, "The official JNU Twitter (X) account recently posted a celebratory message stating that 108 promotions of faculty have taken place till October 18, 2023, during the tenure of the current vice-chancellor. Reality, however, is not captured by merely the numbers quoted in the tweet."
"We could actually have moved closer to understanding the reality if the administration had also provided the numbers of those still pending and the number of years each of the promotions has been kept pending," it added.
According to the association, 125 associate professors are due for promotions to professors. Of these, only 37 received promotions in the past two years.
The association further said that more than 70 per cent of the associate professors employed at JNU are still waiting for their professorship and that several of these promotions have been pending since 2016.
At least 47 faculty members, who had completed the 12 years of service required to be eligible to become associate professors in 2022, are still waiting for their promotions, the teachers’ association says.
The statement also points out that, if appointments after 2010 are taken into consideration, the actual number of these pending promotions could be four to five times greater than the 15 promotions done.
The university has processed only 56 cases within the 200-odd assistant professors whose promotions had been due for more than one stage, the teachers’ body claimed.
On October 31, the university administration announced that it had cleared the promotions of 108 faculty members in less than two years under the tenure of Pandit.
"JNU Vice-Chancellor Prof Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit has cleared and promoted 108 faculty in less than two years, the highest in JNU history," a post on the university's official handle on X had said.
The JNUTA has also called for a collective agitation by faculty members to register their demand to clear the pending promotions in front of the administration building on campus.
