After the amendment of the Jadavpur University Act, the faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies, Law & Management (ISLM) was created. Source: Facebook
An association of Jadavpur University professors has written to West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar and State education minister Bratya Basu, requesting them to take immediate steps to fill up vacant posts of deans in arts and engineering faculties of the varsity.
The Jadavpur University Teachers' Association (JUTA) also pointed out that absence of chancellor's nominees for Comparative Literature and Bengali departments is impeding academic activities.
"There is no permanent dean, neither in the faculty of Arts nor in the faculty of Engineering and Technology for a long time. This seriously hampers various academic and administrative activities and functioning," the JUTA said in the letters, sent separately to Basu and Dhankhar, the chancellor of the institute.
After the amendment of the Jadavpur University Act, 1981 in 2011 and 2012, the faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies, Law & Management (ISLM) was created and students have been admitted to various courses. However, the ISLM cannot award degrees as the university's statutes have still not been amended, the general secretary of JUTA, Partha Pratim Ray said.
"This is likely to cause considerable difficulties for students admitted to various courses of study under this faculty. Such students may face problems with their degrees in future,” Ray wrote in the letter.
"In such a situation, we request you to either approve the amended statutes or close down this faculty. We cannot keep on playing with our students' future in this manner for an indefinite period of time," the letter further read.
The JUTA has been pressing for approval of amended statutes for a long time now. Earlier this month, the JUTA general secretary had mentioned about the need of approving the amended statutes for the FISLM in a letter addressed to JU vice-chancellor Suranjan Das.
Offline classes at the varsity resumed on November 16 after students were asked to attend classes online for several months in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"As COVID-19 still prevails and a new variant has emerged, we have to be vigilant so that not a single student, faculty, and non-teaching staff gets infected and every necessary step is taken for sanitisation," Ray told PTI earlier this month.