Varsity teachers wary of different panels on pay

Patna: College and university teachers in Bihar are at their wit’s end over the anomalous conditions being created by different committees constituted by the state government so far as their pay and services are concerned. Two different dates of appointment of the same teacher have been suggested by the two committees, even as the original date of appointment is altogether different.

Two parallel committees, namely, the V S Dubey committee and the pay verification cell of the state government are simultaneously examining the service matters and payscales of teachers and coming out with different recommendations.

Taking strong exception to this anomalous situation, the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations of Bihar (FUTAB) has demanded scrapping of both the committees as they are adopting parameters which are not only lacking commonality but also ignoring the directions of the courts.

Futab working president Kanhaiya Bahadur Sinha and general secretary Sanjay Kumar Singh alleged the Dubey committee, while deciding the arrear claims of the teachers, is changing their dates of appointment and consequently the dates of promotion, too. Similarly, the pay verification cell has also taken upon itself the right to change the date of eligibility. There is a peculiar situation where Dubey committee and pay verification cell have decided different dates of appointment/promotion for the same teacher. The universities are in a fix over implementation of contradictory orders.

The absorbed teachers working for more than three to four decades, a large number of them have already retired, have to run from one committee to another to get their genuine entitlements. Such situation and a large number of court cases would have been avoided had the government implemented the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of July 16, 2009, to grant all benefits to the teachers absorbed under the three absorption statutes from the initial date of appointment, they said.

On the one hand, the government issued orders to universities (vide memo no. 2011 dated April 29, 2011) to implement the PAC recommendations and, on the other, took different stand before the court resulting into constitution of a one-man committee of Justice (retd) S N Jha. The court had rejected the government plea to refer the matter to Dubey committee and also observed that after three to four decades, neither the date of appointment nor the date of entry could be justifiably changed.

They further said when the government has to save its skin (as in cases of AC/DC bill or recent CAG objections) it advocates the supremacy of PAC, but when it concerns others, it violates the PAC report. Can the government function under such dichotomy in a democracy, they asked?

They hope in the current session of the state legislature, the long-pending issue of absorbed teachers will be settled once for all to uphold the supremacy of PAC and also that of the lawmakers.

Courtesy: TNN