IIT-Centre standoff over: Kapil Sibal

The standoff between the IIT faculty and HRD minister Kapil Sibal seems to be over, at least for the time being. The minister promised the protesting professors on Friday to relax promotion norms in exceptional cases.

While Sibal agreed to “re-look” the contentious issue of promotions, including a 40% cap, to senior grade, he refused to concede their other demand for better pay.

The faculty, however, will take a final decision on calling off its agitation after a meeting with the IIT directors on Saturday.  “All issues between the IIT faculty and the HRD ministry have been resolved. I clarified to them that our guidelines are mere norms and there can be flexibility in exceptional cases. If we find that more than 40% of teachers are eligible for a senior grade, we will try to accommodate them. I don’t see why rules can’t be relaxed to accommodate outstanding teachers and scholars,” Sibal said.

The minister told the protesting professors that the IIT board of governors had the power to deviate from norms to promote excellence.

“The conditions can be laid down by IIT directors and boards. In case of non-availability of faculty in a particular department, the IITs can relax norms to hire,” Sibal said.

Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT-Chennai, however, said the minister said or offered nothing new. “Most demands were met earlier when our directors met the HRD minister. The ministry bent backwards to accommodate the demands of the IIT faculty which included hiring PhDs as assistant professors and shifting assistant professors to pay band 4.

The agitation for the other demands was unjustified since it is a known fact that the directors have the power to relax norms. The teachers were looking for an escape route to wriggle out of this situation, which Sibal provided,” he said.