IIT Kharagpur urged to ensure removal of disciplinary move records against 85 teachers from files

Kolkata: An organisation of IIT Kharagpur teachers has urged the authorities to remove all records regarding disciplinary actions initially taken against 85 faculty members from all official files, a source in the professor's body said on Thursday.

IIT Kharagpur had show-caused 85 professors for protesting an earlier disciplinary action against four of their colleagues.

The four had written to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in September alleging nepotism and arbitrary recruitment of faculty members in the institute in recent times.

However, following their response to the show-cause notices, the IIT Kharagpur authorities on December 8 said that no disciplinary action would be taken against the teachers.

In a related development, the IIT Kharagpur Teachers Association (IITTA) on Wednesday held an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) and decided to make a formal request to the authorities to remove all references to the disciplinary moves from official records.

A source in the IITTA told PTI that every faculty member will write to the Registrar individually to seek clarification on whether the show-caused notices sent to them remain in the official dossier about every individual or were removed by the institute.

Besides, the IITTA itself would also write to the Registrar with a request to expunge the show-cause notice to 85 faculty members, the source said.

The meeting also decided to urge the Board of Governors Chairman T V Narendran to "restore the administrative position of all affected faculty members, including the heads of departments, professors in charge and nodal officers to reinstate the dignity and integrity" of the administrative structure.

The meeting also tasked five office-bearers of the association to handle all legal matters in view of the ongoing developments, the source said.

Trouble started in September when some professors associated with IITTA wrote to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, alleging nepotism and irregularities at IIT Kharagpur.

This prompted the authorities to first issue show-cause letters to the four. They did not reply to the letters within the stipulated time. Eighty-five professors including IITTA office bearers instead met on November 28 and threatened to launch a bigger movement.

The authorities then issued show-cause notices to the 85 professors by the first week of December, citing a rule that, “No employee shall be signatory to any joint representation addressed to the authorities for redress of any grievances or of any other matter.” After 80 of them sent replies to the notices, the authorities issued a statement on December 8 stating that "no further action will be taken against the show-caused faculty members." Asked about the EGM meeting, an IIT Kharagpur official said, "We have no information about any such development. If there is any official communication from either the teachers' body or any individual faculty member we will respond accordingly."