Rajib Ray of the Democratic Teachers' Front, who was elected for a second term as the President of the Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) on Friday, promised to take up issues of promotion that have not been resolved for a long time, the ad-hoc teachers who are waiting to be regularised and promised to oppose the propositions of the NEP along with other pertinent issues.
Rajib, who won his second tern at the office, said that the election was fought on the single issue of the NEP implementation. "This election was is some sense a referendum of the draft New Education Policy. This election is historic in the sense that it is the highest polled election to date. When it becomes a bi-party election it is always a difficult situation. At the end of the day, this was a teacher vs government-backed organisation's fight and we won," said Rajib, who defeated AK Bhagi of the right-affiliated National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) by a slim margin of 269 votes — Ray got 3,750 votes while Bhagi secured 3,481. A total of 518 votes were found to be invalid when the results were announced early on Friday.
Now that he has resumed office as the President, Rajib wants to get back to pressing issues. "We will have to look at cases of promotion that have got stuck up because of the complete inefficiency of the university administration. As far as the MHRD and UGC are concerned, our main issues is to see if we can do something for the numerous ad-hoc teachers and try and regularise them," said Rajib.
Congratulatory messages flooded social media as soon as the news got around. "Salute to teachers for their massive support! This victory is crucial for not only for DUTA but for the teachers' movement of the country. Today, we are faced with an onslaught on our service conditions, public-funded higher education and DU. Thanks to all friends for making this hope a reality," wrote Aabha Dev Habib in a Facebook post. The polling took place on Thursday and witnessed a turnout of 82.36 per cent. The DUTA president has a tenure of two years.
