New Delhi, Dec. 9: The Centre is ready to introduce promised pay hikes for over five lakh university and college teachers and staff across India, aiming to drive home any advantage it earned through yesterday’s Assembly poll results.

The finance ministry has cleared a central pay panel proposal for an average salary hike of 75 per cent, and the Centre is awaiting a cabinet nod, The Telegraph has learnt.

The Congress, which heads the central coalition, won three of the five states that went to polls recently.

Officials would not reveal how much it would cost the Centre each year. The pay rise applies to central institutions and University Grants Commission-funded state universities, and the states are later expected to raise salaries in the universities they fund.

The human resource development (HRD) ministry has finalised the note to be presented to the cabinet, which may take it up this week, the sources said. The initiative to implement the hikes follows another sop — cuts in the prices of petrol and diesel.

A panel under former JNU vice-chancellor G.K. Chadha, also a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, had recommended hikes for faculty and education administrators across the ranks. Hikes were also recommended for non-teaching staff such as laboratory assistants and librarians.

Some finance ministry officials have questioned the significant hikes proposed for administrators, such as vice-chancellors, when the Centre’s stated principal objective is to attract bright young minds to teaching, the sources said.

The Chadha panel too had said it wanted to focus on encouraging teachers to join at the “entry level”. A shortage of quality teachers is one of the biggest challenges higher education faces.

Yet, the panel recommended a hike in basic salary from Rs 26,000 a month to Rs 80,000 a month for VCs, and the government would be implementing it at a time of financial crisis.

Senior HRD ministry officials, however, said several controversial proposals had been tempered in the draft to the cabinet.

“The finance ministry has removed what it perceived as a few rough edge’ to the pay panel’s recommendations, and the HRD ministry has done the same at its end,” an official said. Given the sensitivity surrounding the hikes, officials are unwilling to reveal much.

The panel had also repeated several recommendations that its predecessors had made, such as a suggestion to introduce greater accountability from teachers through peer and student evaluation.

As in the past, teachers’ unions across India have opposed that recommendation.

An HRD ministry official said the proposal to make the retirement age uniform across states had found favour with the ministry and other government arms.

Central university and college teachers retire at 65, but the superannuation age in different states varies from 55 to 62.

Teachers have argued in favour of a single retirement age, 65. But several states have objected, saying raising the retirement age could be a drain on resources.