Faculty and staff members from across 24 Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) institutions have written to Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan expressing concern over the delay in implementation of the Seventh Central Pay Commission revised pay scales, eight years after the announcement by the Centre.
The ICSSR is a national body overseeing social sciences research and falls under the Education Ministry.
The letter, written on August 16 and endorsed by 349 faculty members and staff, stated that while Centrally funded academic institutions had retrospectively implemented the pay scales shortly after the Ministry issued an order in January 2016, the ICSSR was still awaiting permission to have them implemented in its 24 research institutions and six regional centres.
Joint memorandum
Since 2021, over a hundred ICSSR faculty members and staff have submitted three joint memorandums to the Ministry. “No communication from the ICSSR or the Ministry in this regard has been received, also we have not been given any reason for this inordinate delay,” said another faculty member from the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development in New Delhi.
A top official at the ICSSR, seeking anonymity, confirmed to The Hindu that the joint memorandum had been received. “We can only say that their claim is in process,” the of-ficial said.
A formal query sent to the Ministry did not get a response.
A prolonged delay in implementing the pay scales has negatively affected faculty recruitment and retention, the letter to the Ministry stated.
Many high-quality faculty members are departing for greener pastures. For example, in the ICSSR’s Centre for Development Studies (CDS) based in Thiruvananthapuram, the total sanctioned faculty posts are 23 but only 17 positions are filled.
Since 2019, three professors from the CDS have resigned and taken up positions in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; King’s College, London and O.P. Jindal Global University. A faculty member from the Indian Institute of Education, Pune, said in the letter to the Ministry that the institute is facing issues such as non-receipt of grants from the ICSSR since 2017. “On account of this, the State government also does not release matching share of grants.
We are also not receiving research projects and Ph.D. fellowships from the ICSSR over the past six
years. Due to these issues, over 60% faculty have resigned for better prospects,” the faculty member has said.
A Professor at CDS, seeking anonymity, said that while his salary according to the 6th CPC is
₹2.1 lakh per month, if the seventh CPC were to be implemented it would be close to ₹3 lakh a month. “We receive salaries considerably less than our counterparts in other academic institutions with similar profiles do now, despite the fact that the ICSSR institutions have played a vital role in social sciences research and policy formulation in India,” the letter stated.