With no recruitment of regular teachers in Punjab government colleges since 2003 due to a ban by Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC), over 68 per cent of sanctioned posts in all 48 colleges are lying vacant.

As per the information given by the higher education and languages minister Aruna Chaudhary in reply to a question during the just-concluded budget session of the state Assembly, of the 1,873 sanctioned posts in 48 government colleges, 1292 (68.98 per cent) are lying vacant.

Thus only, 581 regular college teachers (31.01 per cent) are working in the colleges even as the in interest of students, 251 part time lecturers (13.40 per cent) and 882 guest faulty lecturers (47.09 per cent) have been recruited against the sanctioned 1,292 vacant posts.

The vacant posts include the teachers of subjects in all three streams of arts, commerce and science. For instance, against 110 sanctioned posts of Chemistry, 72 are vacant and of 54 posts in computer science as many as 51 are vacant.

In several other subjects including English (140), Economics (80), Geography (55), History (75), Mathematics (53), Physics (51), Political Science (86) and Zoology (49), the number of vacant posts is very high. Even when it comes to the state’s own language Punjabi, 202 of 246 posts are lying vacant. In 48 colleges, 73,421 regular students are enrolled at present.

The minister informed that the last recruitment of college lecturers was held in 2003, which was annulled by the state government in 2003.

Following this, writ petitions have been filed in the HC and the next hearing on the same is scheduled for 4 April.

Chaudhary said the state government has not put any ban on recruitment in the college cadre in government colleges, but the HChas put the ban on the same while hearing writ petitions filed in 2003.

Interestingly, Punjab government intends to open ten new degree colleges in the next financial years (2018-19) and has sanctioned Rs 30 Crore in the next fiscal year’s budget for the same.

“If we aim to achieve the Gross Enrolment Ration (GER) of 32 per cent by 2022 which presently stands at 28.6 (2016-17), we have to strengthen the infrastructure for higher education and improve the access to the same, ” the Finance minister, Manpreet Singh Badal said in his budget speech on 24 March.