JNUTA
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATION
Faculty Centre, JNU New Campus, New Delhi – 110 067
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President Secretary
Prof. Chaman Lal Dr. M.M KunjuBackground of JNUTA formation.
It was in 1971, few years after the JNU act was enacted that first association of Faculty and staff was organized as joint platform. It was called---“JNU Staff Association’. Professor Benoy Roy was chosen its founder President. In 1972, Professor Bipan Chandra was elected its President. Later it was thought that JNU Faculty should have its own association. So a meeting of JNU faculty took place on 2nd December, 1972 at 2.30 p.m. in Lecture Hall no. 1(Old Campus), which was attended by 65 teachers. This meeting was presided over by Prof. Bimal Prasad and it passed following resolution:
“This meeting of Jawaharlal Nehru University held on the 2nd December 1972, is of the opinion that there is a need for the foundation of a democratic association of teachers of this University. This association should open to all teachers of the University without any distinction or discrimination reflecting the organic structure of the University. The association should deal with all problems connected with the academic life of the University and those having a direct bearing on it with special reference to the conditions of service, rights and duties of the teaching community.”
This meeting elected two committees:
1. Constitution Drafting Committee---It has eleven members---1. Parimal Kumar Dass(SIS) 2. M.S.Agwani(SIS),3. Krishna Bhardwaj(SSS),4. C.P.Bhambri(SSS),5. G.P.Deshpande(SIS),6. M.P.Pandey(SFS),7. Jawed Ashraf(SLS),8. Bimal Prasad (Convener) (SIS),9. Siwatosh Mookerjee(SLS), 10. Moonis Raza (Convener) (SSS),11. Mrs. Ramalingaswami(SSS)
2. Ad-hoc Committee---- 1. T.K.Ommen(SSS),2.M.L.Sondhi(SIS), 3. Parimal K. Das(SIS),(Convener),4. G.S.Singhal(SLS), 5. R.C.Sharma(SIS), 6. Jawed Ashraf(Convener)(SLS), 7.A.Bhatti(SFL),Joginder Singh(SSS).
Constitution drafting committee met many times, out of which record of 17th Feb. and 22nd February1973 records are available. Joint meetings of ad-hoc committee and constitution drafting committees took place on 24th February and 20th March 1973. General Body meeting to approve constitution was held on 21st March and constitution was adopted in that meeting. And the first ever election to JNUTA was held on 27th April 1973 in which founder President and Secretary of JNUTA were elected---Prof. Yogendera Singh (SSS) and Dr. Parimal K.Das(SIS).
There are interesting episodes in the history of JNUTA. There is record of some correspondence between JNUTA and earliest JNUSU Presidents like—V C Koshi, Prakash Karat, Sita Ram Yechuri, D P Tripathi etc, which has continued in almost every year later. During emergency, two minutes silence was observed without specifying anything, but whose underlined meaning was to ‘mourn the death of democracy’. In 1985, President, Secretary and only two other executive committee members were elected, which did not fulfill the quorum condition, so nominations for vacant positions could not be done. For all practical purpose only President & Secretary represented JNUTA that year. Even after rarely full team is elected. Many times President and executive committee had to nominate half or more members on vacant positions in JNUTA EC. This is not very healthy situation. Faculty, particularly younger faculty must take interest in JNUTA, in order to revive its old glory, when such internationally renowned scholars had participated in JNUTA activities.
Of course present day administration should also know that how earliest administrators like G. Parthasarthy, K.R. Narayanan, Moonis Raza and many others had always given due respect and weightage to JNUTA views in almost every activity of the University. In fact the first Vice-Chancellor of the University, even used to attend JNUTA GBM’s as listener. We would welcome even the present Vice-Chancellor to follow the examples set by the founders of JNU, but it is a sad state of affairs when some of the present day administrators declare with impunity that JNUTA is just ‘a handful of teachers’ and try to denigrate the overall democratic ethos of the University, built by such eminent personalities, by their totally arbitrary, irrational, undemocratic decisions like bypassing the seniority of faculty, because they do not like ‘the face of a particular teacher or present JNUTA President’. To rebut administration’s contempt for JNUTA, this is incumbent upon our faculty members as well to prove that JNUTA is not just ‘a handful of teachers’, which might be the wishful thinking of the administration, but is not the reality on ground.
Chaman Lal
JNU Staff Association
1971 Benoy Roy 1972 Bipin Chandra JNUTA - Presidents/Secretaries-1973-2007
1973 Yogendera Singh Parimal Kr. Das 1974 Sivatosh Mookherjee V. Asthana 1975 Parimal Kr. Das Pramod Talgeri 1976 C J Daswani Pramod Talgeri 1977 K J Mahale Jayasekhar 1978 Ashwini Kr. Ray Jayasekhar 1979 Rahmatullah Khan R. Borges 1980 P.A.N. Murthy R. Kumar 1981 C. P. Bhambri H. C. Narang 1982 S. D. Muni Harjit Sigh 1983 R. R. Sharma B. D. Arora 1984 K. S. Dhingra M. H. Qureshi 1985 Aprajito Chatopadhaya Alokesh Barua 1986 B. K. Srivastava Girijesh Pant 1987 L. K. Pandey K. K. Trivedi 1988 Aijazudeen Ahmad S. K. Sahoo 1989 R. Kumar Sachidanand Sinha 1990 Ashwini Ray Depankar Gupta 1991 Prasanna Mohanty Anand Kumar 1992 Jayshekhar Y. C. Bhatnagar 1993 Kamal M. Chenoy K. J. Mukherjee 1994 Kunal B Roy A. K. Pasha 1995 Varyam Singh A. K. Pasha 1996 A. K. Pasha R. K. Kale 1997 Anand Kumar Santosh Kar 1997-1998 Anuradha Chenoy Uttam Pati 1998-1999 Sashikant Jha Rajat Dutta 1999-2000 Shankar Basu CSR Murthy 2000-2001 Anand Kumar P. K. Yadav 2001-2002 Kamal M. Chenoy Mazhar Hussain 2002-2003 Ajay Patnaik Anwar Alam 2003-2004 P. K. Yadav Deepak Kumar 2004-2005 Rupa M. Ghosh Milap Sharma 2005-2006 Rupa M. Ghosh Rohan D'souza 2006-2007 Chaman Lal M. M. Kunju