A Delhi University decision to introduce an Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system has created a rift between non-teaching staff, to whom the measure currently applies, and faculty members who are dead against it being extended to them.
Ever since the directive was issued last November, the Delhi University and College Karamchari Union has insisted that unless enforced on teachers, too, the arrangement is “discriminatory”.
But teachers — including those affiliated to avowedly progressive and liberal groups such as the Left, Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party — have opposed the new system’s extension to faculty members as a threat to their “dignity” and “academic autonomy”.
Teachers are currently not required to mark their daily attendance — they themselves provide their attendance details to their departments and colleges once
a month.
Under the November directive, issued by the deputy registrar for non-teaching employees, all the departments were to get their staff to register for the biometric attendance system by submitting their Aadhaar details and mobile numbers.
The departments were then to install machines that would mark attendance (and record the times of employees’ arrival and departure) after face authentication.
This prompted the Karamchari Union to write to vice-chancellor Yogesh Singh saying the same attendance system should apply to faculty members, too.
University authorities took the proposal to the December 12 executive council meeting, where teachers’ representatives opposed it. The university has not pursued the proposal any further but sources suggested it was still under consideration.
On January 8, the university wrote to the departments saying many employees “have not reported to the designated venue for completion of their Aadhaar-based biometric registration”, and “this may lead to non-processing of their salary from January 2026 onwards”.
This seemed to cause panic among some teachers who feared the new attendance regime might be enforced on faculty members, too, and shot off a pre-emptive letter to the vice-chancellor on January 9. (University sources confirmed on January 10 that the latest communication, too, applied only to
non-teaching staff.)
Faculty members such as J.L. Gupta, Rajpal Singh Panwar, T.N. Ojha, Ramkishor Yadav, Pawan Bobby, Mamta Chowdhury, Vimlendu Tirthunkar and Dhanraj Meena — all associated with the Academics for Action and Development Teachers’ Association (AADTA) — signed the letter.
“AADTA strongly objects to the coercive linkage of attendance mechanisms with salary, which is a legitimate right earned through service and cannot be withheld as a punitive measure,”
it said.
“Such an approach is arbitrary, violates principles of natural justice, and undermines the dignity and autonomy of the teaching profession.”
Karamchari Union president Devendra Sharma said: “It’s discriminatory to apply the biometric attendance system to non-teaching staff alone. Faculty members are salaried employees too.”