After PM Modi rap, IITs, IIMs to hire faculty

New Delhi: Alarmed by over half the faculty positions lying vacant in the IITs, IIMs and NITs, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is understood to have asked the human resource development ministry to fill these up at the earliest.

Sources stated after the Prime Minister’s displeasure, the HRD ministry is soon expected to get into an overdrive for filling up these faculty positions on a priority basis.

In another effort to improve faculty position the government has recently reduced the minimum income cut-off for granting work permits to foreigners, clearing the way for central higher education institutions to hire faculty from abroad.

The decision to lower the threshold by over 40 per cent — from more than Rs 16 lakh to Rs 9.1 lakh a year — came at a Cabinet meeting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired on November 30.

Sources stated that Prime Minister is keen that these premier institutes should improve their faculty position immediately so that students are not deprived in any way.

It is understood that over 2,000 faculty positions in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are lying vacant while over 3,000 positions are to be filled up in the National Institutes of Technology (NITs).

Similarly vacancies at Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) stand at 212. Out of the sanctioned 5,073 faculty positions in IITs, 2,671 are vacant.

In the NITs across the country, 3,183 are vacant out of 5,428 positions. The sanctioned strength in IIMs is 703. It is learnt that due to shortage of faculty, students have to make do with research scholars, contract, adjunct and visiting faculty as their teachers.

It is also learnt that these institutes are expected to make a special efforts to fill all the reserved posts by conducting special recruitment drive through adverstisements.  In the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe category (non-faculty) posts in IITs, over 350 are vacant, as against the total capacity of around 1,500.