Delhi University will soon come under the ambit of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA). The new committee will bring exam, teaching, learning and evaluation under the ESMA Act. In simpler terms, as per the provisions of the ESMA Act, anyone, be it students or teachers, can be arrested without any warrant by the state police if they violate the clause (VIII) if the ESMA Act.
As per the MHRD order, the committee, which includes a Chairman from UGC and six members, from BHU, DU, Bhopal Law university, TISS Mumbai, VC of Tezpur University and Former Registrar of BHU, will have the power to decide how the major decisions pertaining to teaching, learning, examination and Evaluation will be taken. The official further shared the contents of the order that the first committee meeting will submit its reports within 30 days,i.e. by 3rd November.
According to the newly passed order from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the Modi government has passed the Essential Services Maintenance Act of 1968.
The teachers of the Delhi University (DU) criticised the Union Grant Commission’s (UGC) move to constitute a working group to study the Delhi University Act, 1922, and explore possible alterations that may dissolve the university’s institutional autonomy and suspend the democratic rights of its academic community.
The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) called it as vicious attack on the academic community's intellectual autonomy arguing it is the violation of its moral prerogative to nurture free thinking and democratic values. This comes immediately after the UGC's directive to all central universities to adopt CCS rules for teachers.
The Academics and Action for Development (AAD) on Thursday said the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s constitution of a working group to impose the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) 1968 was a “fatal assault on the very idea of university.
AAD Chairperson Aditya Narayan Misra said: Under ESMA Clause (VIII), anybody can be arrested for speaking out, ‘for instigation’ even ‘without warrant’. Clause (V) states that such an Act ‘shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year’.
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