A recent report by the Reporters’ Collective (RC) drew widespread public attention to anomalies in faculty recruitment in Jawaharlal Nehru University, considered one of India’s best public universities, especially for postgraduate studies and research. The RC expose detailed seven instances where the recruitment process was marked by gross and deliberate violation of the rules. The real story, however, is neither limited to these seven cases, nor about them specifically. Moreover, it is not only about violation of rules but of systematic subversion of the core objectives that underlie rules governing faculty recruitment in a public university. The seven instances are merely symptoms of a malaise in the faculty recruitment process in JNU that runs much deeper and represents one very important element in the process of destruction of a premier university.

ELIGIBILITY RULES VIOLATED

In each of the reported cases, the allegation is that those appointed did not meet the minimum eligibility conditions laid down in the University Grants Commission (UGC) regulations. This was not just oversight. The issues related to the eligibility of these candidates had been flagged in the procedures that took place between the submission of their applications and their interview by a Selection Committee. However, these were sidestepped, and the candidates were inexplicably permitted to appear for the interviews though other applicants were debarred from the same on the grounds of their eligibility. The question is, why would a university administration bend over backwards to ‘accommodate’ particular candidates? The only rational explanation is that those in charge of the University had pre-decided their preference for these candidates and were willing to tailor the recruitment process to get them selected. It must also mean that this tailoring extended to the process that took place thereafter – which ensured that these ineligible candidates ‘outcompeted’ other eligible candidates to emerge as the first ‘choice’ of their respective selection committees. This indicates that the bias must be operating both ways - to favour some and against others. Perhaps this will explain why in over 150 instances where interviews were held and eligible candidates were available, the selection committees did not find anyone ‘suitable for appointment’, as has allegedly happened in several reserved posts, according to the JNU Teachers Association.

FIXING THE SELECTION COMMITTEE

Indeed, it is easier for the Vice Chancellor to handpick the selection committee that interviews the candidates and takes the final call on who is to be selected, than it is to bypass explicitly written rules. This is in addition to the fact that the Vice Chancellor is the chairperson of every selection committee. The ‘rules’ further empower the Vice Chancellor to pick the three subject expert members of the committee. They must be chosen from a panel pre-approved by the statutory bodies of the University, which are again chaired by the Vice Chancellor. At present in JNU, these meetings are all online and concluded swiftly to ‘pass’ all the decisions already taken by the VC. From the time when M. Jagadesh Kumar was the Vice Chancellor of JNU, the ‘approved’ list of experts also ceased to be exclusively made up of those whose names were collectively recommended by the faculty of the Centres/departments to which selections were to be made – the check and balance mechanism was removed and VCs started adding names of their choice to the panels. In addition to the three subject experts who must be from outside the University, the Chairperson of the Centre/Department, and the Dean of the concerned School are members of this committee. Again, from the time of the previous VC, those who hold such positions are always handpicked by the VC and hold office at his or her mercy. Prior to that, for decades these positions used to be rotated among eligible faculty based on their seniority. These heads and Deans also make up the majority of the membership of the statutory bodies where the panels of experts are approved, and recommendations of selection committees are accepted. Appointments to other offices involved in the faculty recruitment process, like the Director of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), are also done by the VC. All these changes in the faculty recruitment process completely centralised the control over selection processes in the hands of the VC and facilitated imposition of the VC’s will over faculty recruitment.

GOVERNMENT’S BLESSING

It may be also noted that the current UGC regulations covering recruitment were notified in 2018 and were adopted in JNU when M. Jagadesh Kumar was the Vice Chancellor. Like the present Vice Chancellor, Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, he had been appointed by the Modi Government, and subsequently he was elevated to the position of Chairman of the UGC. The Government also appoints the last member of every Selection Committee, namely the Visitor’s nominee. Yet the Government has not acted at any point to put a check on JNU VC’s absolute control over the faculty recruitment process and has maintained a silence when there have been explicit violations of rules. The Modi government also brushed aside calls for the removal of the JNU VC because of the remarks she made on a podcast a few months ago – where she not only publicly questioned the UGC’s Regulations but in the process also made extremely casteist remarks. There only reason behind this tacit approval of the conduct of JNU’s previous and current VC can be that they have been doing precisely what the Government has wanted them to do in faculty recruitment process. Rather than academic considerations, political-ideological orientation of the candidates or their personal ties with powerful individuals in Government or JNU Administration became the condition for recruitment. That jobs in JNU, in both teaching as well as non-teaching, have been sold and turned into a source of financial gains to individuals in the JNU Administration cannot also be ruled out. 

CHANGING COMPOSITION OF FACULTY

The significance of what has happened in JNU over the previous ten years may be gauged by the following. According to the faculty details available up on the JNU website, as on August 8, 2026, of the 705 regular faculty members in JNU, as many as 322 (almost 46 per cent) have been appointed during the tenures of the current and the previous Vice Chancellors – 189 of them during the still to be completed term of Santishree Pandit. These new recruits make up 146 of the 246 Assistant Professors and 111 out of 182 Associate Professors. Their number in the Professors category is relatively smaller, just 65 out of the total of 277. This also includes some who have become Professors by promotion after initial recruitment in a lower category. In other words, the bulk of the new recruits would have longer tenures in the University than those directly appointed as Professors. Those appointed before 2016 still account for three fourths of the total number of Professors though that proportion is steadily declining due to retirements and fresh recruitments.

Not only faculty recruitment but even the process of promotions and the confirmation of appointments after probation of those appointed during this period, have been converted into instruments of discrimination. Many of the 100 Assistant Professors and the 71 Associate Professors among those appointed before 2016 are also still in those positions only because their promotions have been blocked until they too submit to the dictatorship of the VC and her masters.

The BJP-RSS ecosystem justifies what has been happening in JNU’s faculty recruitment as correcting or reversing what the ‘Left’ allegedly did previously. They also argued that faculty also controlled the composition and ideology of the students, as JNU had its own entrance examinations where question paper setting and evaluation was in the hands of the faculty. The absurdity of these claims has now been proven by the government’s own actions. Not only has the composition of the faculty been altered, but the university’s own entrance examinations have been replaced by the CUET and NET. The Left still prevails in JNUSU elections. Moreover, while no previous VC of JNU could be remotely considered Leftist, the last two have never made any secret of their allegiance and affinity towards the RSS and its ideology. It is in their terms that faculty recruitment became completely controlled by the VC. Its bogus defence cannot take away the fact that JNU’s faculty recruitment under the Modi Government has essentially been an integral part of a process of destroying the University as an academic institution that would promote independent thinking and study and to convert its faculty into a submissive complier of diktats coming from the top.