The Asian Age: New Delhi: Saturday,
March 25, 2017.
While
government and corporates are pushing towards a biometric attendance system in
their respective offices, there is no system in place to mark the attendance of
the teaching faculty members, including that of the vice-chancellor, in the
prestigious Delhi University.
While
attendance is mandatory for DU students, no attendance is available or
maintained for the assistant registrars (AR), deputy registrars (DR), joint
registrars (JR), registrar, pro vice-chancellor (PVC), and vice-chancellor
(V-C) along with the faculty members.
These
startling revelations have come to light in replies to an RTI filed by Law
Faculty student Mohit Kumar Gupta.
Mr Gupta had
filed an RTI with Meenakshi Sahay, the DR (Information), and also the CPIO of
the university, but received a reply from the RTI-MIS nodal officer on her
reference and behalf on February 14. “The reply by the nodal officer, who is
also the director of DU Computer Centre (DUCC), is astonishing and unheard of, as
it states that information about the attendance record of a specific employee
over a period of time discloses the pattern of entry and exit of a person from
the office, clearly indicating the movement pattern from (their) residence.”
“Disclosure
of such information in public domain has the potential of causing harm to the
physical safety of an officer, including women officers,” the law student said.
The reply
also stated that the information requested is an unwanted invasion in the
privacy of the specific employee and so teaching faculty attendance is not
maintained.
In addition,
the JR (establishment, non-teaching) of DU replied that attendance of the
higher-level office-bearers is not available or not maintained.
While
deciding to move the high court over the matter for patent discrimination and
inequality being meted out against students under Article 14 of the
Constitution with little hope of action from the V-C, the RTI applicant has
submitted a petition to the DU V-C asking him to institute the policy
provisioning biometric or non-IT paper-based attendance system for the faculty
members in the varsity.
“There is no
way of maintaining attendance. When students are being detained from appearing
in examination for not fulfilling minimum attendance, then why not the
teachers? There is complete anarchy and waste of essential man-hours by eating
public money with provisioning of sub-standard teaching. There is no
transparency officer in DU even after the petition to the V-C and CIC’s
guidelines,” Mr Gupta said.