Shah Rukh Khan

New Delhi, May 12: A media school that counts among its alumni actor Shah Rukh Khan and television journalist Barkha Dutt may soon lose about 50 per cent of its faculty following the human resource development ministry’s intervention after an inquiry concluded their appointments were illegal.

The HRD ministry plans to ask the President to terminate the appointments of nine faculty members at Jamia Millia Islamia’s Anwar Jamal Kidwai Mass Communication Research Centre, The Telegraph has learnt.

The ministry is understood to have concluded against allowing these faculty members to continue after an inquiry panel found that they were appointed in violation of University Grants Commission (UGC) norms. The President is visitor to Jamia — and to all other central higher educational institutions — and can terminate appointments.

But the move is also likely to reopen a broader debate on whether rigid UGC norms are the best barometer of quality of teachers in subjects like mass media, drama, acting, dance or other fine arts.

The 27-year-old mass communication research centre (MCRC) at Jamia has emerged as a premier institution training students in film and video production. It is a member of the Cannes-based Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de Téévision (CILECT), a body of the world’s leading film and television schools.

The MCRC has faced a faculty crunch in the past, too, and at present has a teacher strength of 17. In May 2009, Jamia set up an inquiry under retired Delhi High Court judge S.K. Aggarwal to probe allegations that several teachers were appointed at the MCRC despite not meeting the minimum UGC eligibility criteria.

In its final report earlier this year, the panel had concluded that nine teachers had indeed been appointed in violation of UGC requirements.

But veterans associated with the MCRC and specifically to the controversial appointments dubbed the government’s move against these teachers “a potential killer blow” to the institution.

They said it was “ridiculous” to judge the eligibility of teachers of the fine arts or mass media based solely on their academic qualifications in these fields.

UGC regulations currently require that only those holding a PhD in their subject or those who have qualified in the National Eligibility Test or its state equivalent examinations can be hired as teachers by Indian universities.

At the time these appointments were made, the UGC also allowed M.Phil holders who had applied for their PhD to be hired. Exemptions from these rules could — at that time — be granted by the UGC in subjects in which it did not conduct the NET. The courses taught at the MCRC fell under this category. The UGC concluded that the candidates the MCRC picked were not qualified for teaching posts.

But critics say that UGC norms useful as a measure of merit for aspiring teachers in other streams of education are not justified for fields like design, drama, film-making, music or mass media.

Unlike other traditional streams, many of India’s best actors, film-makers, musicians, dancers, designers and journalists — across media —do not hold academic qualifications the UGC requires for them to teach.