IIT teachers' body rejects HRD solution on pay package

NEW DELHI: The All-India IIT Teachers’ Federation, in a meeting on Sunday, has prepared a rejoinder to the representation given by the HRD ministry (MHRD) to the IIT directors on the matter of pay hike on September 2.

In a day-long meeting at IIT Delhi, attended by the faculty representatives of all IITs, except IIT Guwahati, it was decided that the MHRD representation, which reportedly managed to make the directors happy, actually had some ‘misleading’ facts.

The faculty representatives have also decided to give 10 more days to the MHRD to organize their meeting with union HRD minister Kapil Sibal and respond to the memorandum submitted by them on August 24. Prof S S Murthy, president, Faculty Forum IIT Delhi, said, ‘‘We have resolved that our meeting with the minister should be organized within the next 10 days.

Since the memorandum on pay hike was submitted by us on behalf of 3,000 faculty members, the ministry should respond directly to the faculty.’’ He added, ‘‘We will decide on furthering our protests if the ministry doesn’t hold the meeting within 10 days.’’

Murthy said the representation given to the directors had aberrations in the calculation of emoluments and hence, a rebuttal had been prepared. ‘‘Some of our members could access the MHRD representation. They identified some misleading points in it. Some total emoluments were calculated wrongly,’’ Murthy said. He also added that the ministry should not have compared the pay scales of DRDO and UGC with that of IIT faculty.