Hyderabad: Faculty troubles seem to be unending for JNTU Hyderabad. The varsity introduced Aadhaar seeding for all faculty members teaching in the state but that doesn’t seem to have solved the problem. Many private engineering colleges are smuggling faculty from nearby cities in Maharashtra, Karnataka and AP. JNTU-H doesn’t have an answer to this yet.
 
Even school teachers and junior college lecturers were hired during inspections. Bogus faculty was a problem for JNTU Hyderabad during inspections last year too. Criminal charges were pressed against 16 engineering colleges for deploying bogus faculty.
 
As a result the JNTU-H introduced Aadhaar seeding for faculty. “Teachers have to show proof of identity. Any teacher who doesn’t submit Aadhaar or PAN details were not taken into consideration,” JNTU-H VC Shailaja Ramaiyer said. The varsity thus has details of faculty working in the state. But if teachers from other states come here and submit Aadhaar details they would not cause suspicion.
 
“There was a JNTU-H inspection in our college on June 22. Our management brought teachers from Nagpur since they have a sister college there,” an assistant professor at a private engineering college said on condition of anonymity. “The truth is that if colleges can’t get faculty from other states, they get junior college lecturers for Rs 2,500 a day.”
 
The fact that nearly 68,000 persons in the state have registered themselves as engineering college teachers (or prospective teachers) is an indication of the lacunae in the varsity mechanism.
 
The JNTU-H doesn’t have a mechanism to check this and officials themselves have admitted that bogus faculty still exist in private engineering colleges. “The inspections are over but bogus faculty is still a problem. We will continue surprise inspections frequently rather than making it an annual affair,” university officials said.