New Delhi, Oct. 12: IIT and IIM faculty members and their fellow teachers at Centrally Funded Technical Institutions are likely to continue drawing a higher salary than those who teach in central universities and colleges even after the pay scale revision the Union cabinet approved yesterday.

Sources in the human resource development ministry told The Telegraph the higher pay package of teachers at the 119 CFTIs could be protected.

Some IIT teachers had voiced doubts whether they would continue to draw the higher scale because of the tussle between the government and the institutes over a move to raise resources internally.

The finance ministry had wanted all autonomous bodies to raise resources internally to meet 30 per cent of the additional requirement of funds to implement the revised pay scale. But most of the CFTIs had opposed it.

The HRD ministry sources, however, said the higher package for CFTI teachers was not likely to be linked to the resource generation target.

The Union cabinet had yesterday approved the Seventh Pay Commission package for teachers of central higher education institutes - universities, colleges, IITs, IIMs, NITs, IISERs and IIITs - raising the overall package in the range of 22 to 28 per cent. The package includes basic salary, grade pay and perks like medical and telephone allowances.

The ministry sources said the order would be issued after the cabinet secretariat officially conveys yesterday's decision.

The ministry had earlier set up a panel under Professor Ashok Mishra to suggest the scale for CFTI teachers. Another panel studied the recommendations before the finance ministry was consulted. After the finance ministry concurred the matter was sent to the cabinet, which approved the recommendations.

The revised scale will be worked out using a multiplication factor of 2.67 on basic pay for assistant professors and associate professors. For professors and directors, the multiplication factor will be 2.72 and 2.81, respectively, a source said, adding the grade pay and allowances would be subsumed under the package.

The All India IIT Faculty Federation, which had kicked off a protest earlier this week against the delay in announcing a revised package, today welcomed the government's announcement but demanded that details of the revised scale be made public. "The AIIITFF feels that the recommendations of the Prof. Ashok Mishra committee and the report of the empowered committee should be made public," federation chief Prof. M.L.N. Rao said.

The Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) said teachers were also apprehensive about service conditions under the revised scale. It is learnt that the new scale would be implemented along with a tightening of the Academic Points Indicators (API), a system that links promotions to performance in various areas such as teaching and research.

"The (present) API system has denied promotions to the largest section of teachers and has encouraged a rat race for points, with disastrous consequences for the standards of higher education...," the association said in a media statement, possibly alluding to substandard research output in many colleges the API system had led to.

"The DUTA urges the UGC and the government to transparently finalise all details to the satisfaction of the teaching community and in the interest of quality higher education, at the earliest," it added.