Across all the central universities in the country, 54 per cent posts of professors are lying vacant, data provided by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to Lok Sabha showed.
There are 2,426 sanctioned posts of professors across the central universities, out of which 1,301 are lying vacant, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar informed the Lok Sabha while responding to a question by Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad. The ministry does not have any data for state universities.
Of the 47 central universities in the country, leading ones such as Delhi University (DU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) have large vacancies. DU has 157 posts vacant against the sanctioned strength of 264 professors while JNU has 99 posts vacant against 199 sanctioned posts. Pondicherry University, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, Srinagar, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Central University of Jammu, and Central University of Jharkhand have significant vacant posts.
The Central University of Haryana, in fact, has all of its sanctioned 30 professor posts vacant.
Javadekar informed Lok Sabha that the University Grants Commission (UGC) has on February 27, 2018 asked the vice-chancellors of all central universities to prepare a time bound action plan indicating timeline for advertisement of posts, scrutiny of applications, selection and appointment of candidates for teaching positions.
Further, the UGC has notified graded autonomy regulations, 2018 according to which universities can hire foreign faculty up to 20 per cent over and above sanctioned strength, the minister said.
UGC regulations also permit universities to recruit Ad-hoc and guest faculty on contract basis against vacant positions to the extent of 10 per cent of their total faculty positions.
