Engg teachers protest outside Education Minister’s house, demand regular jobs

Nearly 50 teachers who were appointed temporarily under a special Education Ministry project staged a protest outside Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s residence in New Delhi to demand regularisation in their services. 

As per a report published in News18, a section of faculty members hired under the third phase of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) initiated with the World Bank also sat on a day-long hunger strike at Mandi House to raise their demands. 

Some faculty members have also been staging a sit-in outside Shastri Bhawan where office of the the Education Ministry is located. Tejas Bele, one of the protesters, said, “We sat outside the Education Minister’s residence and police requested us to disperse since it’s a high security zone. We also met the additional secretary at the minister’s residence who said that state governments will address our concerns.”  

All protesters are either IIT or NIT graduates. Under the TEQIP-III project, 1,500 assistant professors were recruited on a temporary basis for 71 engineering institutions in rural areas with focus on 12 states. 

The project is aimed at improving the quality of technical education, especially in low-income states, by providing highly qualified faculty members to existing engineering colleges. After the project period, the state governments were supposed to recruit them. The faculty members had earlier protested at Jantar Mantar and were given assurance that their case would be taken up with the respective state governments and was also granted extension for another six months. 

The extension ended on Thursday, Bele said, adding that their demands and concerns were not being addressed. “TEQIP Assistant Professor having degree from IIT/NIT detained by Delhi police because they are raising their voice for sustainability plan which was promised by Central government. It’s the assassination of democracy,” tweeted one of the protesters. 

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• TEQIP teachers demand regularisation in services