Three professors at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur who were serving as the heads of their respective departments and research facilities have been replaced. These professors are identified as Adritji Goswami, Niloy Ganguly, and Nihar Ranjan Jana.
While Goswami was the head of the Mathematics department, Ganguly headed the department of Artificial Intelligence, and Jana was the Chairperson of the central research facility (life science division).
According to The Telegraph, these professors were among the 85 who signed a letter protesting the show cause notice served to four office-bearers of the institute’s teachers’ association. They were among the signatories to the mass representation to the registrar, which demanded that the November 12 show cause notice be withdrawn.
Additionally, the November 27 mass representation demanded that the disciplinary proceedings against the four office-bearers for failing to reply to the show cause notice be stopped.
The registrar, Amit Jain, issued separate notices informing the three that they had been replaced as heads by other teachers.
Notice sent
The notices were sent a day after the IIT authorities issued a statement accusing a section of teachers of propagating a “collective hateful purpose” and “disrupting the normal academic workflow of the institution” in the name of protests.
A member of the teachers’ association said the head of a department or a central research facility usually holds the position for three years. “None of the three professors who have been replaced as heads has completed three years. The administration penalised them for signing the mass representation. The order was made public hours before the teachers’ association held a march on the campus on Wednesday (December 4) evening protesting the authorities’ high-handedness,” said a professor who took part in the march, reported The Telegraph.
More than 100 teachers joined the silent march carrying posters with messages such as “Say No to Autocracy” and “Withdraw Showcause” written on them.
On November 29, the IIT authorities showcased 85 teachers on the grounds that their mass representation violated the institute's conduct rules.
Teachers write to MoE
On September 20, the teachers wrote to the Union Education Ministry, accusing the institute authorities of nepotism and arbitrary faculty recruitment.
The director met the office-bearers of the IIT teachers’ association on Monday, December 2, and asked them to reply to the November 12 showcause notice by December 13. The earlier deadline was November 19. He rejected the demand that the show cause notice be withdrawn, reported The Telegraph.
