PAUTA poll process picks up momentum

Meanwhile, hectic political activity has begun on campus with the aspirants wooing the voters. Yet caution is the watch word on campus with people with a clean image and holding a sway over the teachers’ fraternity being projected as candidates of both the factions.

Nearly 200 teachers held an emergency meeting here today. These teachers belonged to the rival PAUTA group and have authorised Dr M.L.D. Sharma, a senior faculty member of Department of Chemistry, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities, to elect a team on their behalf.

Voicing their grouses, Dr Jaspal Singh Virk said, “The current PAUTA regime has been a team of non-performers. They had one excuse on hand that they were new and were picking up the ropes. But then in this process they have failed the teaching faculty on campus.”

Dr Harmeet Kingra, one of the leaders of two opposite factions that fought PAUTA elections during the previous elections, commented, “There have been so many issues when PAUTA could have raised their voice with the most recent being the entire non-teaching faculty raising slogans against one of us Dr Lubana who was posted as SVC. The PAUTA team did not even whimper. Similarly, a part of our guest house is given away to non-teaching segment, we did not complain even then. On the whole, our faculty has been let down very badly by this team and we need to put up a better team this time.”

Meanwhile “with minor changes in our consultants team, we will be fighting the next elections with the existing team,” informed Mukesh Siag, general secretary of the outgoing PAUTA executive. However about the manifesto of the union, he informed, “Although the activities for the election have already begun, things such as manifesto would get finalised during the last week of election process.

In each term, PAUTA elects a team of 15 members through elections. Apart from the posts as president, vice-president, general secretary, joint secretary and treasurer, 10 more consultants are also elected, informed Siag.

“Out of the 10 consultants, four are elected from among the outstation faculty; two extension teachers and two researchers. The other six consultants are elected from the main station consultants,” informed Siag, adding that as per provisions, if a respective college out of the four constituent colleges fails to get a representative in consultants through the votes, a member of the college even with lesser votes can make through to the team.