Many retired teachers in the SGTB Khalsa College were denied pension by the DU administration, alleged Saikat Ghosh, Assistant Professor of English in the college.
Expressing concerns about the matter, he said many teachers are ailing and in need of urgent care and assistance, but the DU administration has held up their pension on some flimsy pretext.
In a letter, Ghosh talked about his ailing former colleague, Novy Kapadia, who taught English at Khalsa College for 40 years and is in urgent need for money as he has been diagnosed with a rare Auto-Immune Disorder.
“Kapadia taught English at Khalsa College for 40 years and also served the DU administration as a Deputy Proctor for 7 years, between 2003 and 2010. Early this year, he has been diagnosed with a rare Auto-Immune Disorder that has caused irreversible damage to his nervous system and has crippled him,” he wrote in his letter.
Kapadia is a renowned football commentator and author of the authoritative history of Indian Football, Barefoot to Boots. Kapadia was retired from SGTB Khalsa College, Delhi University in 2018.
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Ghosh further said: “In his ailing state, Mr. Kapadia’s troubles have been compounded by the Delhi University’s refusal to fix his pension and help him meet his treatment expenses. Due to no fault on his part, the DU administration has not deemed it urgent to disburse a single penny of his hard-earned pension.”
He said that apart from Kapadia there are other teachers who are ailing and in need of urgent care and assistance.
“Mr. Kapadia’s case is not isolated; in fact it is illustrative of the problems that all retired teachers are facing, especially those whose pensions have been held up by the DU administration on some flimsy pretext or the other, in recent years. Many are ailing and in need of urgent care and assistance,” he said.
Ghosh, also a member of Academic Council of DU, said that he wrote several pleas to the current V-C Yogesh K Tyagi about the matter but he did not pay heed to them.
“Repeated pleas to the current VC, Prof. Yogesh K. Tyagi, have gone unheeded. The union government has also refused to withdraw its ill-advised SLPs against sections of teachers who have been due for pension,” he said.
“This is a brazen violation of the legally-guaranteed right to pension and full retirement benefits for DU teachers. The current DU administration has failed to fix pensions of all teachers who have retired in the last two years,” Ghosh said.
“As Mr. Kapadia’s former colleague, I feel helpless about the way in which this Government and DU Administration continue to behave insensitively towards retired members of our fraternity. I urge friends in the media to highlight this injustice,” he concluded.