IIT-Bombay faculty joins nationwide relay fast

Nearly 4,000 IIT faculty members in the country are participating in the agitation, which has entered its second phase. Ten days ago, the faculty members of the elite engineering institutes had taken mass casual leave. The faculty members here continued to teach but wore black badges as a mark of protest. They said the Union HRD ministry should consider their demand seriously as they were overburdened with an additional 27 per cent of students admitted through the OBC quota besides catering to the new branches of IITs. The faculty members had submitted a memorandum to the ministry last month in support of their demand. The IIT faculty is currently getting salaries as per the Sixth Pay Commission report, which according to them is equal to the UGC grade. They, however, want a higher scale as IITs are specialised higher educational institutes. Meanwhile, IIT-B director Devang Khakhar appealed to the faculty members to desist from any form of protest, following  issuance of an order related to pay and allowance by the ministry of human resource development on August 18 last.