'Fill up vacant posts or face salary cuts'

State education secretary JS Saharia has warned all universities to take immediate steps to fill up vacant posts of principals and

lecturers in colleges in their jurisdictions or face stoppage of salary grants.

The warning came during a meeting of vice-chancellors and deans of all universities in Mumbai on Friday. "Those are the strict orders of Nagpur bench of Bombay high court. It had specifically directed the universities as well as affiliated colleges to fill up vacancies at the earliest. If they fail to do so, they will invite contempt. Even the government will have to face the consequences and therefore we are taking necessary steps to ensure that universities strictly follow court's orders," Saharia told TOI.

In a landmark judgment on December 3 last year, the Nagpur bench had directed the state government and the universities to take steps to ensure the filling up of the posts of principals and lecturers in all private colleges before March 31.

The bench of justices B H Marlapalle and Ambadas Joshi had taken suo moto action of the large-scale vacancies and ruled that the colleges which fail to fill up the posts of principals and lecturers by March 31 should not be allowed to admit students. It had also directed that names of such defaulting colleges should be published in newspapers. However, when the colleges moved to Supreme Court, it extended the deadline till May next year.

Saharia, who was at the helm of affairs of Nagpur University in the VC's capacity just after the infamous Kohchade scam, further said that he had asked all the VCs to follow instructions given by the chancellor during a meeting of Joint Board of Vice Chancellors (JBVC) in January. "Our entire focus was on quality considering the fact that only one-fourth of all graduates in the state are employable. The NASSCOMM survey indicate these alarming figures and we therefore asked the VCs to take steps to improve the overall situation. We cannot be just the mute spectators to falling standards," he said.

On severe shortage of NET/SET qualified candidates, Saharia said it was the problem of universities and they themselves had to deal with them. "It is the basic responsibility of the universities to produce more number of NET/SET holders and PhDs for reducing backlog of qualified teachers. As per Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994, the university must make efforts to fill up vacant posts," he said.

Amravati University VC Kamal Singh who attended the meet hailed Saharia's steps but said that the government should also help the universities to solve these problems. "The government should relax the age of retirement from 60 years to 70 years to fight problem of shortage of principals as followed by the Central universities. The VCs have no authority over finance which is still with the government. The VC should be given more powers and then they should talk about these things," she quipped.