Cuttack: The Ravenshaw Bikash Abhijan (RBA) has expressed concern over the acute shortage of teaching staff the university is facing because of the delay in filling up the 156 posts sanctioned by the state government nearly four years ago.
In a memorandum, the RBA has urged the vice-chancellor "to take necessary steps to expedite the cases in the high court and initiate the recruitment process at the earliest so that the students do not suffer".
The RBA, which is made of socio-political activists and old student leaders, submitted the memorandum to the vice-chancellor on Thursday.
Official records indicate 156 posts - 20 professors, 37 readers and 99 lecturers - in more than 20 departments have been lying vacant for over four years now.
Vice-chancellor Ishan Patro said there was very little the university could do considering the restrictions imposed by Orissa High Court. "However, we are trying with interim measures such as recruiting contractual and guest faculty," Patro said.
The university had first undertaken recruitment process by inviting applications for the posts through an advertisement on June 23, 2014. The high court quashed the recruitment process on December 9, 2015, and directed the university to issue within four weeks a fresh advertisement strictly in accordance with University Grants Commission regulations and complete appointment within a further period of eight weeks.
Accordingly, the university issued a fresh advertisement, inviting applications for the 156 posts on January 29, 2016. But, the high court imposed restriction on it on April 7, 2016 after a petition had been filed challenging the fresh advertisement.
"As an interim measure, it is directed that the operation of the impugned advertisement dated January 29, 2016 shall remain in abeyance until further orders," the court said.
In the memorandum, RBA president Chittaranjan Mohanty said: "Filling up of vacant posts has been in limbo as the university had not moved the Supreme Court against the December 9, 2015 high court order that had quashed the recruitment process initiated through an advertisement on June 23, 2015."
