Bishnu Ram Medhi Government Law College. Picture by Eastern Projections

May 3: A 90-year-old government college has only one teacher for 700 graduate and post-graduate students and no premises of its own. This despite the fact that Dispur plans to introduce a new five-year degree course at the college in the coming session.

Criticising the state government?s apathy towards the Bishnu Ram Medhi Government Law College, the Guwahati unit of the All Assam Students? Union (AASU) has demanded that full-time faculty members be recruited before the government introduces five-year LLB courses at the institution.

According to AASU secretary Jagadish Dutta, the college has only a single-member faculty, assisted by five part-timers, to take graduate and post-graduate classes at present, even though the University Grants Commission guidelines prescribe at least five teachers. He alleged that even the lone full-time teacher, L. Talukdar, has not been receiving his salary regularly. He added that the government proposed to start a five-year course from the next academic session, though an official announcement is yet to be made.

?The salaries of the faculty members should be on a par with the UGC scale. It is shocking that teachers do not get UGC payscales at a college that offers LLB and LLM degrees. The college employs some part-time teachers for a paltry Rs 1,850 a month. We want the government to recruit teachers immediately to the posts so that classes can be held properly,? Dutta said.

Nor does the college have a building of its own. Classes are held in the new building of Cotton College. The college is also located on the Cotton College campus with H. Munir officiating as the head.

Dutta said in the absence of any permanent classrooms for the law students, classes had to be held in the evening. He said the indifference of the government has meant that the condition of the college has remained unchanged since it was set up in 1918.

?About 90 years after the college was established, it is still run by one teacher. Students complain about irregularities but nothing is done to redress their grievances. The 700 plus students are left to fend for themselves as the part-time teachers do not report daily,? he added.

Dispur has been taking an active interest in introducing the five-year law course from the upcoming session, since those graduating from three-year law colleges will not be recognised after 2010. However, the education department, reportedly, plans to start the new course with of part-time teachers for the first two years of the new course which will include subjects like political science, history and economics.