Bihar College Teachers Rally in Patna

Patna: September 8, 2009

Hundreds of university teachers from Bihar on Tuesday took to the streets of the state capital to press for their demands for the implementation of the UGC wage recommendations and for raising the age of retirement to 65, among others.

The rally began at Gandhi Maidan and ended up at the R-Block crossing where members of the Federation of University Service Teachers' Associations of Bihar (FUSTAB) addressed the crowd to highlight their demands.

Besides demanding the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations and raise in the age of retirement, the teachers also demanded full autonomy to various constituent colleges in Bihar, regularization of the salary, new hiring to fill vacant posts, and a promotion plan for senior teachers.

The meeting was addressed by Bihar Legislative Council chairperson Prof. Arun Kumar and Prof. Ramjatan Sinha.

"We are prepared for a long-drawn war with the government after it's repeated ignorance of our attempts to hold talks with it," Sinha said.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated development, the state Human Resources and Development department on Tuesday directed the university to sack Sinha and initiate departmental proceedings against him for his involvement in a 1987 murder in Gaya that landed the Chemistry professor in jail for 92 days.

HRD Secretary K. K. Pathak, in a letter written to the Pro Vice Chancellor of Patna University, said that it was appalling that all these years, Sinha managed to hang on to his job without any enquiry or proceedings against him despite his checkered past, reports said.