Assam University teachers protest against election duties

Guwahati, Sep 5 (IANS) The faculties of Assam University in Silchar protested on Teacher’s Day against the prolonged election duties entrusted to professors impacting the education and research at the varsity.

The Assam University Teachers’ Association (AUTA) raised concerns about the extended election duties assigned to university professors and they have to remain absent from their classrooms and research projects for a long period of time due to these responsibilities, especially in their roles as District Level Monitoring Teams (DLMT) and Assistant Local Management Teams (ALMT) in the election.

As a result, thousands of students at Assam University—many of them are international students—have seen their futures directly threatened, according to AUTA.

The discrepancy between the university professors’ titles, pay scales and their allocated election duties was one of the main points of contention brought to light.

The faculties objected to being assigned to dangerous positions like Static Surveillance Teams (SST) and Flying Squad Teams (FST) during the most recent elections.

Somaditya Dutta, general secretary of AUTA, underlined once more how unfair it is to entrust elderly teachers over 60 and divyaang (differently-abled) educators with election-related responsibilities. Additionally, he demanded that female faculty members who are single parents or have small children be excused from voting duties.

During the one-and-a-half-hour demonstration, teachers congregated close to the university entrance in the September heat, engaging in some light sloganeering.

The university’s registrar, Pradosh Kiran Nath, met the protesters and listened to their demands.

AUTA President Debashish Sengupta spoke to the protesters via video conference while he was in Delhi taking part in a countrywide demonstration against the proposed Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) organised by the Federation of Central University Teachers' Associations (FEDCUTA).

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