To

Professor Ganeshi Lal

His Excellency the Governor of Odisha

Bhubaneswar

 

Your Excellency,

 

It is a dear moment for our beloved Nation to welcome the National Education Policy 2020 that seeks to improve the over-all standard of the education system in India.

 

We, the undersigned students and rightful stakeholders of the educational system of the state of Odisha and the Indian nation, however, are shocked and devastated by the recent draconian ordinance proposed by the Government of Odisha titled the “Odisha Universities (Amendment) Ordinance 2020,” vide The Odisha Gazette Notification No. 1110, Cuttack, 04 September 2020 (Law Department, No. 8219-I-Legis-35/2020/L).

 

The Ordinance seeks to abolish the Senate of the universities which witnessed the representation of students and alumni. This directly affects us and our freedom of expression; in addition, our representation as the rightful stakeholders of universities is at stake. We will no more get a platform to voice our needs and demands. Abolition of sections relating to registered graduates and teachers exposes the undemocratic attitude of State Government. In actuality, these groups—the alumni and teachers—were part of the legitimate members of Senate, being elected from their constituents. Further, from the Senate they were also being elected to Syndicate. Now these rightful stakeholders will no more be part of the decision making process of the universities and their genuine concerns cannot be addressed properly.  

 

It deeply pains us to state that—with the new Ordinance—the Senate is to be abolished and the annual reports are not to be placed or debated in the Assembly. Gross violations and manipulations in the utilisation of public money will soon be a reality in higher education in Odisha. More importantly, while under sections 2(f) and 12 (B) the universities in Odisha receive funds from the University Grants Commission, with the introduction of the new Ordinance, its utilisation will no more be transparent, and no question regarding the same will ever come to the fore.

 

With the abolition of Senate, the State Government seeks to make the Syndicate a 21-member body which, in our opinion, is a crowd. It is pertinent to mention that the earlier Act witnessed representations from Medical, Engineering, and general affiliated colleges as members. The present Ordinance abolishes this democratic inclusive provision and has proposed to create a puppet body of Government representatives and thereby lacks multidisciplinary representations.

 

That the said Ordinance curtails administrative autonomy and freedom, and instead of being inclusive it proposes to be exclusive in appointing our teachers and staff members through the Odisha Public Service Commission and the Staff Selection Board respectively. This act of the Odisha Government, it is feared, will give rise to regional biases in the appointment of faculty and staff. Moreover, it is a historical fact that institutes and universities excel when they do have autonomy to select their teachers and staff based on their requirements, they are in the best position to judge the suitability of a candidate examining their research and teaching abilities. It is noteworthy to mention here that IITs, IIMs, NITs and Central Universities enjoy this autonomy, and they have move forward to make a name for themselves in national and international frontiers. The NEP 2020 suggests the same and the current Ordinance of the Govt. of Odisha thus is contradictory to the national vision of university autonomy.

 

The new Ordinance, if implemented, will promote regionalism and nepotism. Since the current Ordinance will allow the OPSC to recruit faculty members of all ranks centrally, the process will give rise to large-scale corruption and favoritism. It will also bring about large-scale dislocation of faculty and disruption of careers besides depriving a certain section of aspirants—particularly those who are located in areas geographically distant from OPSC—from gainful opportunity. The common selection test, as provisioned in the Ordinance, will set rolling an insidious practice of deputations and transfers, directly contravening the NEP 2020’s vision for faculty empowerment.

 

For National Education Policy, the BJD conducted four Webinars and the Hon’ble Education Minister was coordinating the same. However, on the proposed Ordinance, there has been no deliberation on the part of the Govt. of Odisha with the stakeholders of the university education system, viz., its faculty and staff, educationists, students and alumni, etc., and hence the Ordinance violates the spirit of democratic governance.

 

We, the students of different universities of Odisha, not only anticipate large-scale corruption but also feel that the centralization of the education system as well as the appointment of faculty, staff and vice-chancellors centrally—as proposed in the new Ordinance—is highly regressive and will stifle the aspirations of not only the students and faculty but also sabotage the purpose of higher education in Odisha. Further, it may be mentioned here that the appointment of college teachers by OPSC is not entirely free from corruption and has been questionable in nature. In addition, it has always faced the issue of setting wrong questions and delayed result. Even the time period from advertisement to result publication is three years on average. It has no competence to recruit teachers in universities with all specialisations, and further, the calculation of API as well as judging qualified faculty should not be under the purview of the OPSC.

 

Hence we request Your Excellency to kindly review the status of the system of education in Odisha immediately, which has been a neglected site so far, in addition to directing the Government of Odisha to review and roll back the new Ordinance immediately. Your Excellency’s timely intervention, we believe, will save higher education in the State, as well as the future of students in Odisha.