More than 50 per cent of faculty positions in Odisha's public universities are vacant. While the tiff between the Higher Education department of the state government and the University Grants Commission (UGC) over the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Act, 2020 continues, there seems to be no immediate respite in the offing for the institutions. Excluding the two newly created universities - Vikram Deb in Koraput district, Dharanidhar in Keonjhar - the state has 15 public universities including two law universities, an open university and a Sanskrit university, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
Official sources said the government has sanctioned 1,686 positions of professors, assistant professors and associate professors for the universities but 960 (57 per cent) of them are vacant. In coastal Odisha, the premier Utkal University has a sanctioned strength of 257 faculty positions but 120 are vacant. In Rama Devi, 77 posts of the sanctioned 138 are without any takers and Ravenshaw with a total 267 posts has 156 posts vacant. The Madhusudan Law University has just three permanent faculty members and functions with 45 guest faculty members. In the southern region, Berhampur has 89 of 182 positions vacant and in north Odisha, Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanja Deo (MSCBD) University and Fakir Mohan University have 64 and 43 posts vacant against the sanctioned 115 and 117 positions respectively. In western Odisha, Sambalpur University has a sanctioned 153 faculty posts but 63 are without any takers and Gangadhar Meher University has 72 of 144 posts vacant, as reported by The New Indian Express.
The situation in the new universities of Rajendra and Kalahandi is worse. While Rajendra university has 115 of 126 posts vacant, Kalahandi University's 108 faculty positions of sanctioned 112 are still vacant. And in these two universities, most of the existing faculty members have been deployed from other public universities. This phase can be termed as one of the worst phases for universities in the state. Before the SC stay on the OU (Amendment) Act 2020, the UGC had stopped faculty recruitment across the country for several months.
When it lifted the stay, the Odisha government amended the universities act and had only begun the recruitment drive through Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) when UGC stayed the process in the state again, said a VC, without willing to be named. While the SC was supposed to hear the case in February this year, there has been no update on the case yet, said Ajit Mohanty, a retired JNU professor who had also filed a petition in the SC against the universities act. Higher Education Minister Rohit Pujari said that recruitment can only be initiated after the SC lifts the stay, stated The New Indian Express report.
