Students of Telangana University protest against lack of permanent faculty

It's as if Telangana University (TU) and controversies go hand in hand. Be it the outsourcing of employees' recruitment or plan to withdraw certain courses, there is no shortage of issues. The TU officials are now faced with the problem of recruiting permanent faculty for the varsity's South-Campus in Bhiknoor.

The Bhiknoor students have been agitating, demanding for the permanent faculty in their campus instead of those recruited on contractual basis. The students have already made their representations to MPs and MLAs of the district.

This comes right after the varsity's decision to initiate the Pharma Chemistry course only at the Bhiknoor campus and transfer the permanent faculty to that campus.

The fact that the officials had to do a U-turn, following a month-long agitation by the students of the main campus located in Dichapllay Mandal, and withdraw their plan is well known now.

Earlier, their decision to outsource the employees' recruitment backfired on them as they were forced to terminate 40 employees after just one month of service. The varsity was also forced to shelve their plan of withdrawing more than eight courses by the agitating students.

The TU, which has a strength of over 2,000 students, offers around 25 courses.

Meanwhile, the frequent change of Registrars is also having a negative impact on TU image.

After formation of Telangana state, Nizamabad MP K Kavitha initially showed interest in TU affairs but that did not last long.

The MLCs and other leaders of political parties, who occasionally visit TU, are demanding the State government to provide additional funds for the university to improve infrastructure facilities and to maintain the education standards.

A senior member of the teaching faculty claims that the student leaders are regularly targeting the teaching staff and lodging complaints against them.

"Even the officials want to set right the situation by making minor changes. But they are getting to the root of the problem,'' he said.

When contacted TU vice-chancellor Professor P Sambaiah said that they want to 'set the campus right but a few students are politicising the issues'.

"But we have been taking several measures to improve TU's image and it will take some time to get the expected results," he said.