University teachers write to guv for V-C ouster

MUMBAI: Sixteen faculty members of the University of Mumbai have demanded the resignation of vicechancellor Rajan Welukar. They wrote to governor K Sankarnarayanan about the “sense of restlessness in the academic community ever since Welukar took over as the V-C”.
The letter is signed by heads of department like U J Dixit of the statistics department, A R Aithal of the school of maths, and senior faculty members like Neeraj Hatekar, Ritu Dewan, Romar Correa and Mala Lalwani of the school of economics ; P S Vivek and E Rodriques of the department of sociology, etc.
They raised six critical issues ; the barcoding system, which the faculty say is cumbersome, the credit-based semester pattern, which they feel is not functioning well because of the high teacher-student ratio, outsourcing work to the MKCL, which they said must be discontinued immediately and the vacant positions that have not been filled. The teachers said the issues were raised but the V-C “ignored ” them. The V-C was not available for comment.