Maharashtra: Engineering Teachers Await Promotions For Over Decade

Mumbai: Over 500 teachers at government-run and aided engineering colleges and polytechnics have been awaiting their promotions for more than a decade. Most of them – from assistant professor to associate professor and associate professor to professor – have been due for promotion through the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) since 2012. While the state is expected to have regular bi-annual promotions for university and college faculty, only a few teachers have seen an upgradation of their posts for the last 11 years. In this period, many of the teachers have even retired at lower ranks.

Delay in promotions have affected their careers, say teachers

According to the teachers, the delay in promotions has effectively shut down several career opportunities, such as becoming heads of educational institutes and government bodies.

From 2012 until now, the state government has issued multiple government resolutions (GR) and circulars detailing and updating the norms for CAS promotions under the Sixth Pay Commission. However, the only time it approved applications for advancements was in 2016, when a few teachers from the Government College of Engineering, Aurangabad were promoted.

In 2019, the state Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) started accepting applications from those who were due for promotion under the Fifth and Sixth Pay Commissions. However, the process hit a wall in 2022, when the state issued a GR in June 2022, changing some of the CAS norms and asking the teachers to make fresh applications in accordance with the new rules. However, some of the teachers filed a petition against these rules at the Nagpur bench of the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT), which ordered the 'status quo' regarding implementing the rules.

Teachers demand promotion process should be continued as per older rules

While the government is awaiting a final verdict on the issue, the teachers have demanded that the promotion process should be continued according to the older rules. Earlier this week, the Maharashtra Association of Engineering Teachers (META) wrote a letter to principals and management of four autonomous government engineering colleges of the state, asking them to proceed with the process.

“It is very clear that the operation and implementation of only GR dated 03.06.2022 is stayed and there is no stay on implementation of career advancements scheme for advancement and promotion based on GRs which are in force," read the letter.