Part-time lecturers looking for bigger saviour than SC

Sirsi, Karnataka, July 8: Notwithstanding a Supreme Court direction to regularise their services on humanitarian grounds, part-time lecturers of private aided colleges in Karnataka, who had worked between 1993-94 and 1994-95, have no reason to cheer, thanks to the apathy of the State Collegiate Education department.

The Government had initiated the process of regularisation in March 2003, first for Government college part-time lecturers and then aided college part-timers, by inviting applications. However, though the apex court direction mentioned nothing about the roster system, the department forcibly implemented it in the regularisation process.

According to legal experts, the department had misinterpreted the word ''absorption'' as recruitment and imposed roster system. Roster system should be followed only at the time of fresh recruitment and not during absorption process.

In October 2004, the first list of regularised part-timers was issued benefitting 112 candidates, and the second list in November 2005 for 128 part-time lecturers of aided colleges. According to sources, preparation of the third list had begun now.

In the first and second lists, the department had implemented the roster system in such a way that if there were two sanctioned vacant posts in a particular subject, one would be kept for backlog (reservation) and the other for general meritorious candidate. In the third list, it was said that the department was introducing a new method, wherein if there were two sanctioned vacant posts in a subject, one would be for backlog as per the 1994 roster system and another for the current backlog system. Consequently, the general meritorious candidates would be deprived of their regularisation.

Washing off their hands, the managements of private colleges claim that it was not their mistake not to follow the roster system since 1992. When the Government had banned recruitment of lecturers in the name of austerity measures since 1992, the question of backlog maintenance never arose. If the Government had imposed roster system at the time of appointing these part-time lecturers, they would have followed it. After keeping the managements in the dark all these years, it was unfair on the part of the Government to implement the system in the regularisation process now, they contended.

The managements have written several letters in this regard to the Government, but in vain. They alleged that to hide their mistake, the department officials were forcibly imposing the ''unfair'' roster system on part-time lecturers and managements.

The part-timers were left in the lurch and forced to endure the harassment meted out by the department on one side and some managements on the other side.

With the Government even stopping payment of a paltry honorarium of Rs 1,200 per month (only nine months per year) to the part-timers of aided colleges since 1996, the managements have been forced to bear the expense of giving salary to these teachers.

The part-timers opine that a guideline in this regard from the Principal Secretary of the Higher Education Department would only put an end to their long wait.

UNI