LNMUTA suspends affiliation to ‘defiant’ college units

darbhanga: in a surprise development, the lalit narain mithila university teachers' association (lnmuta) recently suspended the lnmuta affiliation to the teachers' associations of mlsm college, darbhanga and jmdpl mahila college, madhubani, the colleges which were made constituent units of lnmu in the fourth phase. with this, the simmering rift between the teachers of these two constituent colleges and those of old colleges, which were made constituent units before the fourth phase, has come to the fore.the teachers of the two colleges on the one hand and the remaining teacher-members of lnmuta on the other, were at loggerheads for the last one-and-a-half years. when contacted, lnmuta president b c jha told this correspondent that the decision to suspend the affiliation to the associations of the two colleges was taken because the teachers of mlsm college and jmdpl mahila college were consistently and deliberately violating the discipline of lnmuta. they were not obeying the directive of the apex body of lnmuta and had become law unto themselves, he said and added that were organising their agitational programmes on their own, without taking the consent of lnmuta. some of the teachers of these colleges were making statements against the lnmuta functionaries, he said. however, refuting the charges made by the lnmuta president, mlsm college teachers association general secretary narendra kumar jha 'balak' said that the teachers of these two fourth phase colleges were more disciplined than the other teachers in general and the office-bearers of lnmuta in particular. he said that the lnmuta office-bearers were simply using the teachers of these two colleges without supporting their cause, he said and claimed that the lnmuta successfully organised several agitational programmes on the campus with the help of the teachers of these two colleges who used to outnumber the teachers of old constituent colleges in any agitation. however, whenever it came to organising agitations for the cause of the fourth phase teachers, balak rued, the lnmuta office-bearers backtracked. he said the fourth phase teachers did not get increment; they are paid only 136 per cent da in comparison to 251 per cent being paid to the teachers of old constituent colleges and salaries of teachers of the fourth phase colleges for december 2000 and january 2001 had been kept in abeyance. but lnmuta office-bearers are least concerned, he said and added, when we organised a 38-day relay fast in support of our demands recently, none of the lnmuta office-bearers came even for a minute at the site.