The All Bengal University Teachers' Association (ABUTA) has expressed concern over reports that the state government was planning to set up a commission for recruiting teachers in government-aided universities and urged Governor RN Ravi to "intervene and seek withdrawal of the reported move". The higher education department has reportedly proposed setting up the West Bengal University Service Commission to centrally recruit teachers in state-aided universities and higher educational institutions, a senior department official told PTI. A panel is being constituted to examine the proposal, the official added.
Nonetheless, in a memorandum submitted to the governor, who is also the chancellor of state universities, the Left-affiliated university teachers' body alleged that the state government had unilaterally constituted an 11-member committee to examine the proposal without consulting universities, the teaching community or their representative organisations.
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The Bengal University Teachers' Association maintained that "institutional autonomy and academic freedom of teachers are fundamental to the functioning of universities" and argued that faculty recruitment is an essential academic responsibility of individual institutions, not of a centeralised commission.
The association's general secretary, Goutam Maity, said that appointments should be based on specific academic and research requirements of individual departments, taking into account candidates' subject expertise, research contributions and teaching abilities.
"For this purpose, statutory selection committees involving representatives of the departments concerned were indispensable", the association said, adding that a centralised commission would not be able to adequately assess institution-specific requirements of different universities, PTI reported.
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"Any such interference in university autonomy would lead to an overall deterioration of higher education," Maity said in the memorandum.
ABUTA also called for examining the West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Administration and Regulation) (Amendment) Bill, 2026, and argued that it provided for inter-university transfers of teachers.
Such measures, according to the association, were aimed at establishing unrestricted state government control over universities and their faculty members.
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