Report prepared by Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association

 (October 7, 2025 – updated version of report first released in September 2023)

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has suffered terribly under the effects of the concerted attack it has faced since February 2016. The vicious campaign slandering the image of the institution, its faculty, and its students, that was unleashed at that point of time was only the beginning of a long drawn process of sapping the institution of the vital energies that underlay its remarkable achievements and earned the institution such great prestige across the country and the world. What followed that attack has been a systematic process of undermining the institution from ‘within’, with the office of the Vice Chancellor serving as its hotbed. The current and the previous occupant of that office have shared the responsibility for this. Even as old wounds continue to fester, new injuries continue to be inflicted on the institution’s body politic – whereby JNU is being subjected to a process of death by a thousand cuts. This is happening despite the current Vice Chancellor being an alumna of the University.

In the last one decade, the terms ‘governance’ and ‘leadership’ have been turned on their heads to acquire rather ominous meanings, whereby they have in effect become synonyms for their antonyms. From being a ‘public’ institution in which the quest for knowledge and learning in all its dimensions thrives through the lives of its students and faculty, the University has been steadily pushed in the direction of being reduced to being an expression of the Vice Chancellor’s persona, into a fiefdom in which the writ of the occupant of that office reigns supreme. Displaying utter contempt for institutional norms and statutory provisions that made for democratic self-governance and orderly functioning, a centralised, arbitrary and dictatorial mode of (mis)governance was put in place, which tolerated no questioning of decisions. Currently, the JNU Administration under the leadership of the Vice Chancellor is waging a war against the University faculty.

Despite all attempts to subdue them with strong arm tactics, victimisation, and harassment, through the rampant misuse of powers, teachers, students and staff of the JNU have been putting up a collective resistance in response to the attacks on the University. There were also a slew of decisions of the honourable Courts that deemed several decisions and actions of the University Administration as illegal. These were the two countervailing factors which slowed down what was nothing but a process of destruction of a national asset, a public university whose history epitomised both the possibilities and the necessity of combining excellence and equity. This report sets out some of the details of the undermining of the institution that has been taking place.

Governance and Institutional Autonomy: The Conversion of a Public Institution into a Fiefdom

JNU’s exceptional achievements as a University which gave it its great reputation across the world, and the synergy between academic excellence and social equity that was its essence, had been based on it having a democratic governance structure. This by and large involved decision-making through bodies like the faculty committees at the level of Centres, Boards of Studies at the levels of Schools, and the Academic and Executive Councils at the level of the University as a whole. At each of these levels, not only were faculty members a significant component, both ex-officio as well as elected, a bottom-up process that allowed the collective opinions of faculty to be brought to bear on decisions at all levels was its hallmark. Other stakeholders like students also had a representation, and oversight was also ensured by each decision-making body having members from outside the unit in relation to which decisions were to be taken. This included membership from outside the University, including Members of Parliament in the University Court. In this structure, the Vice-Chancellor, Deans of Schools and Chairpersons of Centres largely had the status of being ‘first among equals’ – responsible for facilitating this process rather than enjoying the power to lord over the institution and impose their writ on the faculty. This was also the essential basis for the institution’s autonomy and that involved Vice Chancellors also serving as channels through whom government decision-making with regard to Universities benefited from inputs that came from the University community and their concrete experiences.

It is, however, the complete turning of the governance structure of the past on its head, that has marked the last decade. The model of governance JNU now has, where the Vice Chancellor is the ‘boss’ of this enterprise, and faculty are effectively disenfranchised, had several building blocks.

1. One of the most important of these was the discarding of the long standing, and non-discretionary, system of rotation by order of seniority in the appointment of Chairpersons and Deans. This weakened the structural basis for collegial functioning of Centres and Schools and the role of the faculty committees in decision-making. It similarly eroded the representation and reflection of faculty opinions in statutory bodies like the Academic and Executive Councils, where Deans and Chairpersons are ex-officio members and make up a substantial part of the membership. The practice of discretionary appointments of Chairpersons and Deans, rather than following rotation by order of seniority, continues to be operational in JNU. Appointments at purely the whims and fancies of the Vice Chancellor, with the sole objectives of snuffing out any possibility of independent opinions being articulated and promoting a culture of servility, have only served to undermine these offices and reduced them to being mere executioners of what the Vice Chancellor decides.

The discretionary appointments of Deans and Chairpersons, which has included reappointing the same person several times over and putting several Centres in charge of Deans who are not from the Centre, has also meant several serving Professors of the University have been bypassed in these appointments. Some have even retired without getting the chance to hold these offices. The position of Chairperson or Dean is of course not a prize to be won but a responsibility to be discharged. Those bypassed have been deprived of the opportunity to contribute to the development of the institution by bringing their experience to bear on this process, and not because they were unfit for the job but only because they did not fit in with the agenda of the VC. The institution is also poorer as a result.

Further, the JNU Statutes vest the power of appointment of Chairpersons in the Executive Council. The ‘role’ of the Executive Council, in what have now become discretionary rather than rotation by order of seniority based appointments, has been limited to formally ratifying a choice already made. Though the desirability of following the norm of rotation by order of seniority has been recorded several times in the Executive Council, no information or documents are supplied to the members that list all the eligible faculty members, their order of seniority and their previous tenures as Chairpersons, if any.

In fact, one important change that has happened under the current dispensation is a violation of court orders which the previous administration was compelled to follow. In its observations dated 26.10.2021, the Hon’ble High Court had said that prima facie, the course of appointment of Chairpersons followed by the University was not the correct one. The result of this order had been that in the next meeting, the University shared with EC members details of seniority and rotation before appointing the Chairperson. Even this minor change in practice was first discarded, and then the power of appointments itself was taken over by the Vice-Chancellor and every appointment is now presented before the Executive Council as merely a ratification item. To make matters worse, the University Administration made the then SIS Dean make a patently false submission before the Hon’ble High Court that is on record, wherein he has stated that there has been no past practice of appointment of Chairpersons by rotation based on seniority in JNU.

2. The structural weakening of statutory bodies and the tendency of reducing their role to rubber stamping decisions already made has been further reinforced by the way the Chairs of these meetings, the Vice Chancellor in the case of the Executive and Academic Councils, have conducted themselves. The practice increasingly became one where the chair simply disallowed any meaningful discussion and deliberation. This was elevated to an even higher level during the COVID-19 related closure of the University and the transition to online meetings.

Although the pandemic related restrictions have long gone and the dispensation also changed, the practice of having online meetings, which are typically brief and reduced to a mere formality, continues to be the norm as far as the Academic and Executive Councils are concerned. Several requests have been made from various quarters to revert to physical meetings, and even been accepted as legitimate by the Chair. At least in the case of the Executive Council, it is also the case that for some time it has had no members other than those who are from the University and therefore present on campus. Despite the absence of even a single legitimate reason for the same, if every single meeting of the AC and the EC since February 2022 has still been online, it begs the question – why? Is this not taking recourse to a convenient way of avoiding genuine deliberation and discussion on important matters concerning the University? The actual experience of meetings of statutory bodies clearly indicates an affirmative answer to this question.

The nature and duration of meetings of statutory bodies like the EC and the AC is also a reflection of what actually takes place in them. No item by item discussion, which would allow members inputs to feed into the decisions, takes place in these meetings. Instead, agenda items are unilaterally declared passed by the chair, often at breakneck speed. Barring token gestures of allowing one or two members to speak briefly towards the end, genuine and serious deliberations are conspicuous by their absence. Raised hands and the comments of members in the chat box are often ignored. It is often the case that there is extremely partial and incomplete documentation of all pertinent facts in the circulated agenda papers. Confusion and opacity is the general mode in which meetings are held, and decisions on all matters are pre fixed. On occasions, even when some information is shared and accepted as relevant, or an opinion agreed upon as valid by all members, they do not find their place in the minutes and neither are these minutes ever corrected.

3. Even the number of meetings actually held are fewer than what the University’s regulations dictate. According to Regulation M2, the Executive Council is required to have at least four regular meetings in a year, where the notice has to be issued at least 14 days in advance and agenda papers circulated at least 7 days in advance. Since February 2022, there have been only nine regular meetings. On the other hand, as many as 17 ‘emergency’ meetings at extremely short notice, often less than a day, have been held. Emergency meetings as per the regulations are meant to be for exceptional matters where urgency is required. However, they have been repeatedly called only to purely formally record Executive Council ‘approval’ of various appointments or recommendations of the Finance Committee and are usually over in minutes. Such a large number of ‘emergency’ meetings, and low ratio of regular to emergency meetings, is a speciality of the tenure of the current Vice Chancellor. It is a reflection of rampant ‘irregularity’ and that is the real ‘emergency’ situation JNU faces.

Regulation M1 of the University further stipulates that the Academic Council should meet at least two times in each semester. Since February 2022, however, just seven AC meetings have taken place. It is also pertinent to note that the invitee status that JNUTA had in the Academic Council for long, which was dispensed with under the previous Administration, has also not been restored.

This problem of irregularity in meetings has also percolated down to the Schools of Studies level, where Boards of Studies have been vested with important powers related to the academic activities of the Centres. Meetings of these Boards are also not complying with the provision in the JNU Ordinances that they be held twice in every semester – in the case of the School of Social Sciences, two years passed without any such meeting being held. In the case of a special Centre, no meeting of its Special Committee has been called for almost four years.

In recent times, the effects of this institutional failure have extended across a range of extremely serious matters concerning the working of a public academic institution, the following being only an illustrative rather than exhaustive list (and additional examples can be seen in subsequent sections of the report):

1. Finance committee recommendations including University accounts have been approved with no background papers for the EC members to deliberate. Audit reports have not been shared with members.
2. Decision on hiring of the agency for University security was done in an opaque manner even as the security situation on campus showed signs of deterioration, and with members of the EC being unaware of the terms and conditions of the contract. Audit objections related to the payments made to the security agency were not transparently discussed in the EC.
3. The new ordinance for PhD programmes, based on the 2022 UGC Regulations in JNU, was deemed adopted without seeking any opinion and feedback from Schools and Centres, despite this being asked for in the AC and being accepted. These ordinances are also being sought to be applied retrospectively to students admitted in the 2022-23 academic session, the illegality of which has been established by past decisions of the Courts.
4. The selectivity that had existed in the process of JNU giving recognition to degrees awarded by other institutions in exchange for receipt of recognition fees has been decisively abandoned. In addition to such recognition being granted to a number of professional courses offered by a range of institutions, JNU has now also opened its doors to recognise programmes of studies of private institutions – commercialising itself in the process, along with becoming an instrument of privatisation of higher education.
5. The University’s Academic Calendar has even been approved after it has been implemented or the deadlines mentioned therein are outdated. In the absence of any serious deliberation and discussion in the objectives, the attainment of the objective of synchronising the academic calendars for different batches of students has been repeatedly thwarted. Though many Universities have been able to return to a regular calendar after the pandemic related disruptions, this has not happened in JNU. At least three different calendars continue to be in force – in the current academic year 2025-26, the semester began for continuing students in July 2025, a month later for those admitted to the UG and PG programmes, and in mid-September for new entrants into PhD programmes.

JNU’s academic calendar continues to be effectively determined by the National Testing Agency (NTA) rather than within the University. This is because of the insistence on using the CUET for admissions to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in JNU, and vesting of the responsibility for conducting the PhD entrance examinations also with the NTA. This state of affairs originally emerged out of the process of the previous dispensation abandoning the practice of JNU conducting its own entrance examinations and shifting to a computer-based examination using exclusively the multiple choice questions (MCQ) format. Neither academic nor any administrative justification existed for that shift which was imposed from above and did not enjoy the endorsement of the faculty across schools and centres. There was also no legal compulsion for JNU to adopt the CUET system or for it to pass on the responsibility for the PhD entrance examinations to the NTA. The relevant regulations are clear – Universities enjoy autonomy in such matters; this legal position still holds. On 28 August 2023, the Central Government, while responding to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), informed the Delhi High Court that the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) was not compulsory for Central Universities, and that on matter of admissions as institutions of higher learning they were autonomous and free to adopt what was best for them.

Within months of her joining, the current Vice Chancellor had also publicly aired her concerns regarding the unsuitability of the MCQ mode adopted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admissions to JNU MA and Ph.D programmes. This was also reiterated in an Academic Council meeting when the matter was raised there. Despite all of these, for reasons that have never been stated, the JNU admission process has remained in the hands of the NTA. A further step in the same direction, of replacing the PhD entrance examination with a system of using the UGC-NET examination scores from the 2024-25 admissions, was taken without even the formality of an Academic Council ‘decision’, let alone any discussion in Centres and Schools. Instead, after asking for the opinions of Centres and Schools opinions on whether JNU should revert to its own entrance examination, the JNU Administration has refused to place these opinions before the Academic Council for deliberation and discussion.

All of these are stark examples of how centralization of powers within the University, and effective throttling of serious deliberations in its decision-making bodies, go hand in hand with erosion of University autonomy. The JNU admission process and its calendar are victims of an agenda that has been decided outside the University and forced upon it – the changes never emerged from the crystallization of opinions of the University faculty and its different Centres and Schools.

Faculty Promotions

During the tenure of the previous Vice Chancellor, the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) was distorted into an ugly instrument of victimising teachers and promotions were almost guaranteed to be denied unless the teacher concerned were to pay complete obeisance to the Administration. In what originally appeared to be a welcome change after the new Vice Chancellor took over in February 2022 was that an almost completely stalled promotion process did resume. However, this positive picture became increasingly marred by it becoming increasingly clear that instead of serving its real purpose of encouraging the faculty to give their best to the institution, the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) was being turned into an instrument of a carrot and stick policy deployed against the faculty.

One of the implications of the misuse of the CAS promotion process has been the progressive slowing down of the process despite a huge backlog of pending promotions persisting. That 112 applications for promotion were pending with it was admitted by the JNU Administration itself in July this year, though the actual number is even higher. Moreover, disheartened colleagues who are avoiding even applying for their due promotions is also a growing number. Despite this, the promotions have come to a virtual standstill. In the period from February 2022 and till the Executive Council meeting of 26 August 2025, Selection/Screening Committees have met to consider 228 cases of promotion of faculty. This may be compared and contrasted with the 326 posts for which Selection Committees have been constituted and interviews held during the same period. Of the 228 promotion cases considered, as many as 109 were in the calendar year 2023. This number dropped by over 50% to 53 in 2024. In 2025, only 33 cases had been considered though in case of appointments, the number was 64. 2025 was also the year in which 4 extremely deserving colleagues were also inexplicably denied promotion. Moreover, two colleagues also retired this year without their promotions being processed – despite promises being made by the University Administration.

The proportion of Professors within the faculty has been considerably reduced by the absence of promotions in the feeder cadres. The majority of the Associate Professors in the University have completed more than three years in that position and therefore constitute the least number of those eligible for promotion to Professor. Many Assistant Professors have a service long enough to have been promoted to Professor or Associate Professor by now, and therefore have several promotions pending. What is remarkable though is that even where the selection committees constituted for recruitment purposes can also consider the cases of promotion, the systematic policy at work is of not taking advantage of such opportunities.

In addition to the administrative apathy and inefficiency which are encouraged by the absence of any steps by the Administration to check them and to ensure accountability, there are even more serious factors behind the large backlog of pending promotions as there is a clear policy of pick and choose being followed :

• Selectivity and arbitrariness has characterised the treatment of different applications for promotion. This includes the speed with which these are processed. Despite the UGC regulations stipulating for a maximum time period of six months from the date of application for the completion of the entire process – without any explanation being offered, long overdue promotion cases where there are no issues of eligibility, etc. to be sorted out have not reached their final stage. The case of the senior colleague who retired at the end of September 2025 as an Associate Professor is a case in point – she was eligible for promotion to Professor w.e.f 2014 and her application has been with the University since 2019. It did not get processed only because the Vice Chancellor wanted to victimize her.
• Several teachers have also been subject to discriminatory and illegal treatment related to counting of their service rendered in JNU or in other institutions for determining their date of promotion. Several faculty members who have been promoted have been forced to sacrifice the counting of their past service as the ‘price’ for those promotions. Those who are unwilling to do so are being told that without that they will never be promoted. This includes those whose counting of past service had been approved by the EC of JNU before 2016.
• Past promotions have also been brought into question on such grounds, including a case where a recovery process was initiated against a faculty until a stay was granted by the Honourable High Court of Delhi. Past service benefit has also been denied by changing the date of eligibility of promotion during the application processing process.
• New and utterly illegal methods of persecuting faculty are also created – for instance, in several cases promotion was not granted from even the officially approved date of eligibility – with an imaginary claim that the date of promotion is a ‘discretion’ of the Vice Chancellor or the Selection Committee. The date of promotion was changed to deny seniority by over five years in at least one such case. The University’s position, however, came a cropper in the Honourable High Court which ordered the promotions from date of eligibility.
• Despite the UGC repeatedly, including very recently, having made it clear that the date of promotion should not be affected even if the requirements of orientation and refresher courses are completed after completion of the years of service required for promotion, JNU faculty were denied this benefit for a long time.
• The charge sheet issued to 48 teachers in 2019, the operation of which has been stayed since then by the Honourable High Court, is being illegally used to block the promotions that were even due before the date of the chargesheet and the date of the protest action it relates to.

The promotion process has also been affected by the continued undermining of institutional norms. Despite the JNUTA and elected teacher representatives to the Executive Council having raised these matters several times, and the JNUTA also submitting two years ago a draft SOP for promotions whose adoption could streamline the process and ensure uniform and fair application of rules, the Executive Council has effectively not been allowed to discuss and decide the issue of promotions in a way that can lead to a resolution of the problems. Instead, the decisions on promotions are made within the administration and protected from any proper scrutiny by the EC or by the collective of teachers. This has continued despite it being a flagrant disregard of the verdicts of the Honourable High Court of Delhi. In two separate orders delivered in December 2023, the High Court struck down the denial of promotions of JNU faculty on the grounds that the process followed was opaque and lacking in transparency, and in contravention of the laid down statutory provisions as well as the Constitution of India. The Court specifically pointed to the absence of deliberation in the Executive Council on the reasons behind the ‘decisions’ to approve what was placed before it.

The general lack of transparency, which includes a heavy reliance on ‘word of mouth’ rather than written statements about why the promotion rights of faculty are being denied to them, has only one reason behind it – it serves the ends of concealing the rampant illegalities and the selective and discriminatory approach being followed by the Administration. Entirely non-academic considerations are behind this, with social or religious background, or perceived political position of the individual concerned, determining treatment by the institution. It has created a situation where in several Centres, junior colleagues and sometimes even their own students have come to occupy higher posts than many senior faculty members with long service to the University.

Faculty Recruitment

The previous Vice Chancellor had done immense damage to the integrity of the faculty selection process, so much so that even the Honourable High Court had found JNU guilty of violating its own statutes. The practices from that period which eroded the checks and balances within the system have persisted in the appointment process that has taken place since February 2022. This includes the implications of moving away from non-discretionary appointments of Deans and Chairpersons, both offices with a statutory membership of faculty selection committees.

According to reports, from the choice of experts to the shortlisting of candidates, the role of the Centres and their collective has been undermined in several of these appointments and decisions taken at the higher administration level have prevailed. In a rising number of instances, a court order has been cynically misused to even keep the Chairperson, a statutory member, out of the selection committee. The experiences reported by several candidates who appeared before the Selection Committees also indicates the undue influence of non-academic considerations in the recruitment process, and absence of fairness and civility in the proceedings for all candidates. This has only been reinforced by appointments being ‘approved’ by the EC without any sharing with the members recommendations of the selection committee and other relevant details. Prima facie evidence of gross violations of rules to favour some candidates have also emerged, but keeping everything as a closely guarded secret is the response of the JNU Administration.

Of the 326 vacancies for which Selection Committees were constituted, only in the case of 184 were any candidates actually recommended for appointment. The operation of extraneous factors is also revealed in the fact that ‘no suitable candidate’ was found (NFS) in the case of 133 vacancies where Selection Committees were held – in other words, in over 40 percent of all such cases. The majority of these are reserved posts and the proportion is only increasing with time – in the last 81 vacancies considered, NFS was the verdict in as many as 55. In some such cases, NFS has been declared even when eligible and qualified existing faculty of JNU were candidates for higher posts in their own Centres. In fact, eligible existing faculty who were candidates for appointment against several vacancies were openly ruled out from consideration on precisely the basis of their being ‘internal’ candidates, though this ‘principle’ was also breached selectively. In other words, their legitimate legal claim to be appointed against those posts was denied to many JNU faculty without reference to their relative merit. In certain instances, manufactured technicalities that are JNU’s own creations have been used as the pretext to deny them the opportunity to be considered by the Selection Committee. In other words, treatment of JNU faculty in direct recruitment too has reflected the selectivity seen in promotions.

Some time ago, the JNU Vice Chancellor was reported by the media as having claimed that the University’s EC has sent a proposal to the Ministry of Education to downgrade posts of Professor and Associate Professor where ‘suitable’ candidates cannot be found. No such proposal, however, has even been discussed in the EC and any action therefore of sending a proposal amounts to violation of statutory provisions. The reality is that the repeated demands of elected teacher representatives for a detailed investigation of what lies behind such a large number of NFS recommendations have been summarily rejected. Further, the idea of ‘downgrading’ of so many reserved posts also smacks of the worst kind of prejudices, unbecoming of a public institution like JNU.

Harassment and Victimisation of Teachers

In addition to the harassment and victimisation teachers have been experiencing in the promotion and recruitment processes, in several matters related to their work as teachers and academics, they are suffering the consequences of bureaucratization, administrative apathy and the insensitivity which are bred by a centralised structure of governance.

Probation and Confirmation – The harassment of long-standing faculty in JNU through pick and choose in the CAS Promotion process has been accompanied by a parallel trend in relation to new faculty who have joined the University. Bypassing the Executive Council which is the appointing authority of faculty, the current Vice Chancellor has set a national record of sorts by arbitrarily extending the probations of several faculty appointed during her own tenure. The process has been marked by blatant illegality and the differences between those confirmed and those whose probations were extended had no relationship with their performances or the recommendations from their Chairpersons and Deans. Extensions according to the whims and fancies of the Vice Chancellor without any reasons being stated are simply another expression of the carrot and stick approach – and the consistent attempt is to make that the norm.

Termination of Faculty – The recent termination of a young faculty member who had already been victimized by illegal extension of his probation is also a reflection of the same approach as seen in promotions and confirmation, but taken to an even higher and extreme level. The case for even an accusation of misconduct in this case is flimsy to say the least, let alone one so grave as to lead to termination from service – and it is nothing but pure personal vendetta of the Vice Chancellor that is the reason for it being treated as a disciplinary matter warranting dismissal. The flimsy pretext for the dismissal and the arrogance of power has also been reflected in a complete denial of due process and natural justice – it was in fact a termination without any termination proceedings. Thanks to the intervention by the Honourable High Court, the termination is presently in abeyance but there is clearly a no holds barred attempt to push it through. The personal appearance of the Vice Chancellor before the Honourable High Court in the matter also reveals the true intents behind it.

Leave – Leave for academic purposes is a facility granted to teachers for their academic improvements and achievements, which ultimately benefit the institutions of higher learning. Unless there is any specific exigency, any leave that a faculty member is eligible for is expected to be granted as a matter of routine. In the tenure of the previous VC, several restrictions were imposed on such leaves that went beyond the provisions related to such leave in UGC Regulations. The current dispensation, by bringing into the picture a ‘Leave Committee’ with no statutory basis, to consider and make recommendations in all cases of long leave, has taken this a step further. This has undermined the ultimate purposes of such leave and opened up the process to delay and undue bureaucratic harassment. Unreasonable demands are made for spurious papers – such as contracts from publishers when leave is sought for working on a manuscript which may not be at a stage where publishers would consider a contract – which would be a laughing matter were it not that it has extremely serious consequences. Similarly, on vexatious technical grounds, leave has been denied or delayed, or applications not forwarded, even when these involved prestigious appointments which should in reality have been a matter of pride for JNU. The Leave Committee has even begun usurping the rights of the EC, directly rejecting applications for leave where EC is the statutory leave granting authority, without even bringing the matter to the EC.

Charge Sheet – As mentioned previously, 48 teachers were issued a charge sheet in 2019 under major penalty proceedings, alleging that they participated in an illegal protest, by invoking the CCS rules which are not applicable to University faculty. Seeing prima facie merit in this contention of inapplicability of CCS rules, the Honourable High Court had stayed the inquiry proceedings. Despite this, and the settled position in law that pension and pensionary benefits cannot be denied without due cause having been established, through due process, and an order being issued by the relevant authority, JNU had been withholding pensionary benefits of several colleagues who have retired since. It was only after a series of court orders that provisional pension, leave encashment, and even gratuity had to be released to them – with the University rather than the individuals responsible for the illegal decisions having to bear the cost of interest payments that were also ordered by the Court on account of the delays.

With the change of the dispensation in JNU, it was expected that the inquiry proceedings would be withdrawn and the suffering of affected faculty would be brought to an end. Despite attempts by the JNUTA, however, this has not happened. While the University made a completely empty claim before the Honourable Court that it was seeking an amicable settlement of the matter, the reality is that newer and newer ways are being found using this as a stick to beat the teachers with. In one case, it has been also illegally used to deny the issue of offer letter to a University faculty selected for a higher post, despite the recommendation of the Selection Committee having been approved by the Executive Council.

Even when they retire from the University, acknowledgement of their  contribution, say in the form of honorary appointments as Emeritus Professors, is prevented, while those appointed previously are treated with disrespect.

Marginalization of Women, Retreat from Social Equity and the Changing Composition of the Student Body

One trend that emerges clearly from the CAS and appointment processes, and other kinds of victimization, is that the University’s commitment to gender and social justice is being severely compromised. The composition of those who are suffering the most from the operation of policies of pick and choose would make this clear. The large proportion of reserved posts in the NFS category also points in a similar direction. Even the proportion of women faculty in the University is showing an adverse trend despite the Vice Chancellor always highlighting that she is the first woman VC of JNU. As shown in the Annual Report for 2024-25, as on 31 March 2025, JNU had 208 women faculty members, which is 29.7% of the total faculty strength of 700. This is lower than the 30% proportion which prevailed on 31 March 2022, and even lower than the 30.9% of 31 March 2016.

The impact of the shift away from its own entrance examination, and the elimination of the deprivation points system in admissions to research programmes, on the composition of students in JNU is impossible to identify in full detail. This is even more so because the longstanding practice of a report on admissions being placed before the Academic Council has been dispensed with. However, one thing clearly stands out – JNU’s past achievements in improving the social composition of the University’s student body, and increasing the proportion of women, have been reversed in the last few years and continue in that direction. Figure 1, based on data culled from the University’s Annual Reports brings out this reversal in the case of women quite starkly.

Figure 1: Share of Women in JNU’s Total Student Strength, 2013-14 to 2022-23 (%)

An additional factor that is possibly at work is that the environment in the University has become progressively unfriendly to women with the abolition in 2017 of JNU’s proven institution mechanism for dealing with sexual harassment, namely the GSCASH (Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment), which had existed since 1999.The replacement of the GSCASH with the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), now simply the IC, was done ostensibly in the name of ‘complying’ with UGC Regulations to curb sexual harassment. However, that body has consistently failed to even comply with the requirements in the UGC Regulations for preparing annual status reports. While the campus has become more and more unsafe with both security lapses and a general atmosphere of impunity to sexual harassers, reporting of cases to the IC has decreased. The arbitrary functioning of the IC, whereein it works as an extension of the top administration rather than an ‘autonomous’ body, has weakened the institutional mechanism for addressing the problem of sexual harassment.

More recently, the proportion of students from SC and ST categories is also showing trends that should be of great concern. As the Annual Reports themselves show, between 2021-22 and 2024-25, the number of SC students declined from 1500 to 1143 and that of ST students from 741 to 545. This has reduced the SC share in the total student strength from 15% to 14.3%while for STs the decline is from 7.4% to 6.8% – in both cases these are levels below the prescribed reservation percentages.

Another reflection of a change in focus of the University is the declining proportion of research students in JNU, which is again based on data in the Annual Reports. From a situation where they constituted the majority, research students are now outnumbered by students in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes – their absolute number in fact has declined from 5432 in 2016-17 to under 3286 in 2024-25. As a share of the total student strength, this decline is from 62.2% to 40.1%. This decline has also been precipitated by the mindless implementation of UGC Regulations. These first imposed a uniform cap on the number of M.Phil and Ph.D students any teacher can supervise. Then the M.Phil programme was scrapped (which happened in JNU even before the UGC abolished it) without revising the caps on the number of PhD students, even though supervision came to be restricted to only PhD students as the parallel M.Phil supervision was eliminated.

The denial of promotions and the large number of non-selections against vacancies is also adding to the problem because the maximum number of PhD students a teacher can supervise as per the UGC Regulations vary according to the posts, and increases with promotion to Associate Professor and then Professor levels. Every promotion to Associate Professor, or that from Associate to Professor, that is delayed means a loss of two PhD vacancies.

The fact that such stark trends in the composition of students – which have both academic and equity dimensions – have invoked no serious discussion and evaluation about their origins and implications, and what if any measures are needed to address them, is a symptom of what University governance has been reduced to.

Finances and Expenditure Priorities

The shifting of the University’s thrust from academic and equity considerations after 2016 has also reflected itself in the precipitous decline that has taken place in the academic expenditures, as reflected in the Annual Accounts (Figure 4).

Figure 4: JNU’s Academic Expenses, 2009-10 to 2024-25 (Rs. Crores)

What has been the extent of this cut and what are the kinds of expenditures that have been affected are further illustrated by the comparison between 2015-16 and 2023-24 depicted in Table 1. The expenses related to examinations have been left out in Table 1 because one major component of it, which is related to the expenditure on entrance examinations, no longer appears in JNU’s accounts as the responsibility for conducting them has been transferred to the NTA. This outsourcing of entrance exams to the NTA, however, has also meant a loss of academic receipts that JNU used to receive from sale of application forms. As can be seen in Table 2, these proceeds from sale of forms more than covered all examination expenses in 2015-16, despite application forms being priced very nominally by JNU compared to what is charged by NTA. Even though JNU is no longer conducting entrance examinations, it has compensated much of its loss of academic receipts by increasing the burden on students and applicants by charging them additional fees (including application fees in addition to what applicants pay to NTA). That is why the receipts in the form of fees paid by students have increased more than two and a half times while examination expenses have come down.

Table 1: Academic Expenses Excluding Examination Expenses and Selected Components, 2015-16 and 2024-25, Rs. Crores

Item	2015-16	2024-25	Cut Percentage
Laboratory Running expenses	3.16	0.75	76.3
Fieldwork/Participation in Conferences	1.08	0.22	79.6
Seminars/Workshops	1.79	0.05	97.2
Journals & Publications	3.50	1.43	59.1
Total Academic Expenses Excluding Examinations	30.28	19.29	36.3

 

Table 2: Receipts from Sale of Admission Forms and Examination Expenses, 2015-16 and 2024-25, Rs. Lakhs

Item	Rs. Lakhs
	2015-16	2024-25
A. Academic Receipts in the Form of All Fees Paid by Students and Applicants (other than from Sale of Admission Forms)	240.80	856.53
Receipts from Sale of Admission Forms	460.64	0.00
B. Examination Expenses	439.68	115.65

 

It can also be seen all around the University that a significant part of  JNU’s infrastructure is also crumbling and there are no funds available for even routine maintenance. Yet if matters of such serious concern are not the focus in JNU’s key decision-making bodies, it again reveals the nature of priorities that are ruling over the University’s functioning. This is als sharply highlighted by the contrasting trend in legal expenses – with more having been spent on this head in 2024-25 than the combined expenditure of the previous two years.

Creche

A JNU Creche was established in 2002, and the JNUTA had been overseeing its functioning with support from the University. Its facilities were being used by not only JNU Faculty, but also Research Scholars and members of the JNU Staff. JNUTA had repeatedly been asking the University to take over the responsibility for the Creche as it required increasing expenditures which were being met from the JNUTA subscriptions paid by all its members. However, instead of responding to this positively, the JNU Administration did the opposite – by making every attempt to squeeze the JNUTA financially. Eventually, during the Covid-19 lockdown, JNUTA had to terminate its financial support to the Creche as the burden of that support had become unsustainable. Even then, the JNUTA ensured salary payments to the employees for several months when the Creche was closed due to lockdown measures. The responsibility for running the creche was accordingly handed over to the University Administration in September 2020. Even though 4 years have passed, till date the Creche remains closed with only some maintenance work on the premises having been done.

All employers are legally responsible to operate a functioning Creche/Day care centre for their employees. Specifically, in the context of Delhi, under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970 (Notification No. S.O. 143, Sept 1972), “A Creche should be located within 50 metres of every establishment where 20 or more women are ordinarily employed…” The UGC Guidelines for General Development Assistance under the XII Plan and earlier recognized this and provided for grant for the establishment and maintenance of day care centres as basic facilities for women. The Maternity Benefit Amendment Act (2017) also makes creche facilities mandatory for every establishment employing 50 or more employees. All other Central Universities, including Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia and IGNOU provide Creche facilities to their employees. However, despite several representations being made even after the change of dispensation in JNU, no forward movement has been seen in this matter.

Conclusion

This report has provided a snapshot of the severe crisis afflicting JNU, which is adversely affecting the teaching-learning and research activities of the University. There are innumerable issues in addition to those highlighted here which could be added to the list of the symptoms or reflections of this crisis. There are many others on the cards, those that have arisen in the name of implementation of NEP 2020. The snapshot, however, serves to illustrate why JNU teachers are unable to feel that they, guided by their academic expertise, and their social and intellectual commitments, exert any significant influence over the direction the University is taking. They find their dignity and self-respect being subjected to a continuous assault, and the Vice Chancellor who heads the institution has lost all legitimacy in their eyes. As such they do not find that circumstances are conducive to them giving their best to the institution they are supposed to serve – not because they do not want to but because they are not allowed to. The only option before JNU teachers, if they are to remain true to their responsibilities, is to consistently resist this process of destruction of a university, a public asset over which no administration and no government can claim ownership. As part of that endeavour, we release this report with the objective of informing those to whom the institution ultimately belongs – the public.