HED fails to utilize services of college contractual lecturers in Kashmir

SRINAGAR — Despite High Court directives, Higher Education Department has failed to utilize the services of college contractual lecturers in Kashmir.

The High Court in its judgment has directed the Higher Education Department to utilize the services of college contractual lecturers who have been working on academic arrangement basis in different colleges of Kashmir for years.

A spokesperson of the college contractual association said they are highly qualified lot of the J-K UT and were always “deceived by the previous regimes which forced our 5% 7-years-candidates to move court in the year 2013-14 for justice”.

“But the Higher Education Department is trying to harass us more and more by altering our nomenclature from academic arrangement to need-basis which forced most of the candidates to move court and to fight against this dictatorship from HED,” the spokesperson said.

He added, “From August 2019, we are without salaries when the J-K High Court/CAT has given the direction to the department that our services should be utilised but from 2019 till date, our services were availed only for nine months in the year 2020. And from December 2020, we are still waiting for the utilisation of our services but nothing came from HED as they harass us more and more and forced us to give in writing that we are ready to work as guest faculty which is totally a human rights violation against the highly qualified lot of the JK UT.”

“From 24th of July, the HED tried to override the court orders by appointing new candidates over status-quo ones but the Principals didn’t allow them to join as they demanded that unless and until Higher Education will not give in writing what we have to do with those candidates who are with us since 2013, we will not go against the court orders,” the spokesperson said.

They have requested the concerned Advisor R R Bhatnager and the Commissioner Secretary, Higher Education Department, Sushma Chauhan to look into the matter and allow the candidates to work who have directions from court.

“And we request the Nodal Officer Kashmir/Jammu that don’t try to violate the court orders and appoint the fresh 60% candidates other than the status-quo ones,” they said.

Nodal Principal Kashmir, Yasmeen Ashia and Sushma Chauhan did not respond to the phone calls and text messages to get their comments.