“Central Government ignored the almost important recommendations Chauhan Committee deliberately” – AIFUCTO

Imphal, Jan 24: All India Federation of University and College Teachers’ Organisation (AIFUCTO) has expressed displeasure over the central government ignorance to the recommendation of Chauhan Committee – a committee for review of the 7th UGC Pay.
A statement issued by the Zonal Secretary, Zone –I (NE), AIFUCTO, M Lokendro, also President of All Manipur College Teachers Association (AMCTA) said that the full Report of the Chauhan Committee constituted for the 7th UGC Pay Review Committee has finally reached AIFUCTO and other concerned parties.  
“Ever since the government notification of the revision of pay scales for college and university teachers and prior to that AIFUCTO has been consistently asking MHRD to make public the recommendations and full draft of the Chauhan Committee Report. But due to some unknown reasons MHRD did not respond. This was an unprecedented action as the norm has been to share the Report with AIFUCTO and other stakeholders before Ministry worked on it. This was a very democratic and transparent procedure that kept all the parties satisfied and informed on the developments that were going to take place”, the statement said.
The statement added that the present MHRD maintained stoic silence on the recommendations; AIFUCTO and other stakeholders were not once taken into confidence in the entire period after submission of the Report on 22nd Feb, 2017. It said the AIFUCTO and others got the full text of the Report not from the straight channel but after RTI activist Naveen Gaur demanded through a PIL that the Report be made public.
AIFUCTO President Prof. Kesab Bhattacharya & General Secretary Dr.Arun Kumar in a press release had stated that the 139 page Report has made very important recommendations and unfortunately MHRD has bypassed all those suggestions. They have modified the recommendations as per its own whims and it is now cleared why MHRD tried to keep the Report under covers. The most important deviation from the Report is the financial support for the implementation of the PRC recommendations which the MHRD fixed at 50% for 39 months. The Report strongly recommended the 80% financial support to states for entire five years. The other recommendations too have been completely ignored by MHRD.  
As per the recommendation  80% financial assistance should be provided to state universities for five years, Research grant for social science should be Rs 4 lacs & for science upto 10 lacs, Academic allowance for every teacher on monthly basis,  Health Insurance scheme for teachers on 50-50% basis, ICT allowance and access to national and international libraries/journals for teachers, No adhoc/contractual/part time appointment for more than six months, Permanent appointment on vacant posts and sanction of extra posts according to the need etc.
The statement also stated that the Chouhan Committee in its recommendation clearly says that to retain and attract the faculty members in university/colleges, teachers must be provided above facilities immediately .
Prof. Bhattacharya & Dr Kumar said that the actual recommendations of the PRC reflect majorly the suggestions of PRC had with AIFUCTO and other stakeholders. MHRD and the Central Govt. ignored the almost important recommendations of the PRC deliberately. Ignorance to recommendations for academic and research facility clearly indicates the anti-teachers & anti higher education attitude of this Government.  
Now that the full text of the Report is available to us, we demand an immediate meeting with the MHRD Minister and remove the anomalies that exist.  AIFUCTO  requests for a meeting with both the  Chairman UGC and the MHRD Minister immediately for further discussion and consideration of all the positive points in Chouhan Committee Recommendations for better future building of higher education in India.
An important meeting of AIFUCTO office bearers is scheduled on 11th Feb, 2018 in Delhi to discuss all these issues and chalk out All India movement programmes during the budget session of Parliament, the statement added.