If absentees get attendance, they don't require a dean anymore: Why Ved Kumari resigned from DU's Faculty of Law

Ved Kumari was three months short of completing her tenure as the Dean when she resigned from the post. Her resignation has since sparked off some unpleasant revelations about the state of affairs
Professor Ved Kumari
Professor Ved Kumari

On June 14, Ved Kumari, the Dean of the Delhi University's Faculty of Law resigned fro, the post she had held. Kumari, who was three months away from completing her tenure had, in fact, listed nine reasons for her resignation. 

Of these, the first was the university's decision to allow students with a mere 31 per cent attendance to write their exams. In 2017, the department had prohibited students who failed to meet the minimum attendance criteria from writing their exams. Students protested against the move in a rather violent manner. Kumari, at that time, had even alleged that she was threatened. Two years down the line, Kumari observes that nothing major had changed. But at the same time, she alleges that the university blatantly marks attendance for students who are not present for lectures and let them write exams, just to avoid protests. "The university did not want protests, so they started giving attendance to everyone. If the students who do not attend classes at all can get enough attendance and write the exam, they do not require a dean anymore," she says.

The other reasons included a failure to ensure long-due promotions for teachers, unavailability of office space for teachers to meet students and do their research, failure to pay the previous Section Officer seven months salary, failure to pay two Junior Assistants cum Typists (JACTs) associated with Dean's office and inaction against a particular Professor-in-Charge, Faculty of Law, about whom various teachers and students had complained. 

"I regret to say that despite doing my best, I have not been able to succeed and secure the best interest of the Faculty of Law in the last two years and nine months due to non-cooperation of the university authorities and illegal/arbitrary actions of the Professor-in-Charge, Campus Law Centre," Kumari wrote in her resignation letter, addressed to the university's Vice-Chancellor. What was it that prompted her to resign from her post now, we asked. To this, she says, "I didn't want to go without a whimper against all that that's happening."

Strangely, her resignation hasn't exactly created too much of an uproar yet. Kumari says that she is yet to hear from the various teachers' associations. She was, however, duly contacted by the administration. "They told me that the VC is not accepting my resignation. But I said that I will not stay here," she says, adamantly.

Students attached to the DUSU don't appear to be too sympathetic to her case though. A DU Students' Union spokesperson said, "Resigning three months before completing her tenure is only an attempt to gain publicity. Professor Ved Kumari did not do her job properly. The irregularities in law faculty during her tenure are a clear example of this."

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