On Thursday, the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) conducted its elections for the post of President and fifteen Executive Committee members. Rajib Ray, a professor of Philosophy from Kirori Mal College and the leftist Democratic Teachers’ Front (DTF), was named the President of DUTA on Friday morning by scoring 2636 votes.
The elections were held in Arts Faculty, North Campus. Teachers from colleges across Delhi came to cast their votes from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday evening. This year, the voter turnout was massive as it amassed to an estimate of 7,200 members.
Rajib Ray told The Hindu, “We are looking forward to fighting against the failures of the government and other authorities. Timely disbursement of pension and setting up of a review committee are our top priorities.”
In his manifesto, Ray questioned the prevalent education policies and raised important issues such as those of privatisation and autonomy of DU colleges. He said “Education policy is currently being dictated by the NITI Aayog, whose CEO recently proclaimed that the government should “hand over schools, colleges, jails to the private sector”. Its Draft Action Plan is being pushed through various UGC Regulations. The Draft on Graded Autonomy defines three categories of universities based on NAAC scores and NIRF rank.” He even criticised the DU administration by saying that “The DU administration has been deaf to the denial of promotion to thousands of teachers and forced them to go to the Court. It has surrendered to the Ministry of Human Resources Development directive to appeal against the positive Court order on pensions.”
His main motto is to defend public education. With such a win, a lot is expected from his tenure as the new President of DUTA.
Feature Image Credits: Democratic Teachers’ Front
Bhavya Banerjee
[email protected]
Comments are closed.