AMU Questioned for Illegal Promotion Scheme, HRD Seeks Report

Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) have come under the scanner for violating the University Grants Commission (UGC) rules and regulations. The University is rumoured for allegedly carrying out promotion and recruitment process for teachers. With respect to this, the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry has asked for a report on the irregularities in promotions and hiring of the teachers. The HRD ministry has also asked the UGC to cross-examine this matter.

The responses given to RTI queries disclosed how the promotions of the teachers are done without taking care of the minimum Academic Performance Indications (API) score of 120 points ignoring the performance of those who fulfilled the criteria. There were teachers who were promoted on the basis of book reviews while in some cases school teachers were upgraded without having guided any Ph.D. scholar.

All these appointments and promotions were made during the incumbency of outgoing vice chancellor, Gen Zameer Uddin Shah who retired on 17 May. The principal of AMU's Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Tariq Mansoor is the new vice chancellor of the university.

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An audit team had recently visited the university to sort out this matter.

The teachers revealed that the promotion criteria was not only based on illegal conditions but was also applied selectively. They said that the candidates who didn't even fulfill the minimum eligibility criteria were given promotion and no female expert was present on the selection panel meeting held on 10th February. The faculty members had also informed about the discrepancies to the administration of the university.

Claiming all the allegations to be false, Shah said that these complaints were made by those who faced action for dereliction of duty and for financial irregularities. He added that everything is now clarified to the MHRD. The audit team will surely support the university. He commented that it will be a pity if the university gets blamed for all these allegations.

The letter by MHRD to AMU asking the university to send their answers to the ministry at the earliest s that the '3 Ph.Ds' promotion condition i.e guiding 3 Ph.D. students for promoting an associate professor to a professor is neither approved by the university's academic council or executive court nor does it follows UGC Regulations, 2010. The complainants received states the situation when faculty members guiding only one or no PhD scholar were given promotion. Thus the '3 Ph.D.' promotion scheme which itself violates the UGC regulations was used in discriminatory and selectively ways by the university.

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A senior faculty member from the department of political science opened up and said that during the tenure of the current VC a dozen of teachers were promoted in the same way after one faculty member got promoted without guiding any Ph.D. scholar