TEQIP III Faculty to Lose Jobs Soon, Request Regularization by Protesting in New Delhi

TEQIP III faculty has intensified their peaceful protests at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. The protests have been called as 1554 TEQIP III faculty are at the risk of going jobless after 31 March 2021 as their contracts are coming to an end. The protestors have been requesting for their retention and regularisation, while stating that they have been responsible for educating several students across the country

Who Are TEQIP III Faculty?

TEQIP III refers to the Third phase of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme, which is fully integrated with the Twelfth Five-year Plan objectives for Technical Education as a key component for improving the quality of engineering education in existing institutions with special consideration for low-income states and special category states (SCS) and support to strengthen few affiliated technical universities to improve their policy, academic and management practices.

The National Project Implementation Unit (NPIU), a unit of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, had hired graduates from IITs, IISc, NITs, and other Central-funded universities for this purpose in 2018. However, their contracts are soon coming to an end. The protesting faculty say that they need to be helped because they have been working for the betterment of society.

“We all are working for the betterment of Higher education, but now we are struggling for our future. Regularize TEQIP III faculty, take action with no delay,” says Sonika Shrivastava. “IITians and NITians are Protesting on Jantar Mantar. Never thought this would happen to IIT/NIT Graduates and Post Graduates. We request our Education Minister to Handover Extension to TEQIP Faculties,” says another tweet.

Similarly, the official account TEQIP faculty has been regularly raising their voice for the cause. “We 1500+ TEQIP Faculties are from all over India and are placed in almost all Rural Government Engineering colleges of India. 1500+ TEQIP Faculty is the pool of Trained Human Resources. The Government should appreciate them by continuing their service in MERITE Project too,” tweets the official account of TEQIP faculty while making a plea for a permanent solution to the problem of temporary services.

Some suggestions from academia include recruiting these faculty at places where there is a deficit of teachers. “The Government should explore possibilities of utilizing such resource persons a little further. May be subject to certain professional criteria. There are lots of vacancies in the teaching cadre. A partial remedy is using this pool of TEQIP faculty,” says Prof SankaraRaman Sankaranarayanan, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli (NIT Trichy). However, the Government of India is yet to make a formal announcement regarding the issue.