No attendance record of DU staff, says RTI

New Delhi: While government and corporates are pushing towards a biometric attendance system in their respective offices, there is no system in place to mark the attendance of the teaching faculty members, including that of the vice-chancellor, in the prestigious Delhi University.

While attendance is mandatory for DU students, no attendance is available or maintained for the assistant registrars (AR), deputy registrars (DR), joint registrars (JR), registrar, pro vice-chancellor (PVC), and vice-chancellor (V-C) along with the faculty members.

These startling revelations have come to light in replies to an RTI filed by Law Faculty student Mohit Kumar Gupta.

Mr Gupta had filed an RTI with Meenakshi Sahay, the DR (Information), and also the CPIO of the university, but received a reply from the RTI-MIS nodal officer on her reference and behalf on February 14. “The reply by the nodal officer, who is also the director of DU Computer Centre (DUCC), is astonishing and unheard of, as it states that information about the attendance record of a specific employee over a period of time discloses the pattern of entry and exit of a person from the office, clearly indicating the movement pattern from (their) residence.”

“Disclosure of such information in public domain has the potential of causing harm to the physical safety of an officer, including women officers,” the law student said.

The reply also stated that the information requested is an unwanted invasion in the privacy of the specific employee and so teaching faculty attendance is not maintained.

In addition, the JR (establishment, non-teaching) of DU replied that attendance of the higher-level office-bearers is not available or not maintained.

While deciding to move the high court over the matter for patent discrimination and inequality being meted out against students under Article 14 of the Constitution with little hope of action from the V-C, the RTI applicant has submitted a petition to the DU V-C asking him to institute the policy provisioning biometric or non-IT paper-based attendance system for the faculty members in the varsity.

“There is no way of maintaining attendance. When students are being detained from appearing in examination for not fulfilling minimum attendance, then why not the teachers? There is complete anarchy and waste of essential man-hours by eating public money with provisioning of sub-standard teaching. There is no transparency officer in DU even after the petition to the V-C and CIC’s guidelines,” Mr Gupta said.