This is to share a few points on AMU Student Agitation, August 2025:
(1) Since long the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) of India has been under huge pressure from the government and the University Grants Commission, to raise its own internal resources. This includes fee-hike. As of now, there is a contention between the AMU administration and the agitating students about the quantum (percentage) of fee-hike.
Neither the administration nor the agitating students have thus far been able to produce a categorical comparative table chart (comparison between the pre-existing and the revised fee structure, as well as a quick comparison with that of other Central Universities). Even the AMUTA Executive Committee has gone silent on the apparent genesis of the agitation (8 Aug 2025, 8.30 pm); it is silent on justification or un-justifiability of the fee-hike and its quantum.
(2). Being an insider and a student of modern and contemporary history of India and having studied (and written) a bit about AMU affairs and student agitations in India and beyond, I feel like reiterating a few specific points about AMU.
Quite often, AMU Student agitations are more about internal power struggles among various clout-wielding teachers who wish to perpetuate endlessly inside the AMU administration. There have been some recent developments in AMU because of which I am not surprised about the turmoil; this was waiting to happen. Was it being engineered by the clout-wielding teachers? An impartial, time-bound inquiry from the government may establish the truth, which won’t ever happen, I suspect. Incumbent regimes, arguably, have a tendency to appease the elites of the Qaum, regardless of which ideological persuasion is wielding power in New Delhi and Lucknow.
May you please have a look into the following developments within AMU:
(A) A recent verdict of the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court has given a categorical ruling that the teachers/employees placed in the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) despite having been appointed on REGULAR basis after January 1, 2004 (regardless of their temporary services prior to 2004) must be placed in the New Pension Scheme (NPS). The AMU has placed quite a few teachers, including some of the very powerful ones (including some blue-eyed boys of the successive VCs of AMU), in the OPS, despite having been appointed on REGULAR basis years after 2004. In compliance with the HC verdict (dated March 3, 2015, as well as July 2025; link of the judgment in the comment box), they have to be placed in the NPS. The moment such files reportedly started moving, instigating the student agitation possibly became inevitable. A fair probe would establish the truth.
(B) Some of the local news reports have suggested that certain teachers are facing Vigilance inquiry from the govt of India. The AMU Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) has allegedly/admittedly been delaying the job for whatever reason. Also see this news report and this news report
Now, it is understood/speculated, further delay is becoming difficult for the AMU-CVO. Affected teachers might possibly have got rattled and desperate. They may have resorted to instigating student agitation? This too needs a probe to establish the truth.
(C) Since long many of us have been telling the AMU administration that all longstanding teacher-administrators (non-teaching profs) must be replaced. Administrative reshuffle is being delayed inordinately and unjustifiably. Certain teachers have become Emeritus in their respective offices. Their tribe, the co-aspirants (who, just like the incumbent ones, cannot really survive without certain administrative assignments) might be turning restless and they might be behind the agitation. Again, only a govt’s impartial, time-bound probe can really establish the truth.
(D) Objectionable and unjustifiable arrangements of recruiting School teachers of both the serving ones on a temporary/ad hoc basis (and getting extensions after extensions of relaxation in getting B Ed degrees and qualifying the competitive eligibility test –CTET; please refer to AMU Office Memo D. No. (C)/526, dt. 7 August 2025 [in continuation of D. No. (C)/684, dt. 6 August 2024), and the arrangement to place them on permanent basis (with skewed weight-age of 70% on interview cum presentation and only 30% for written test); the sub-regional composition of the Directorate as well as of those recruited as teachers and non-teaching staff; and “questionable” ways of admissions in the schools on large scale in the name of filling-in the “casual” vacancies, are the issues which have all along been going un-checked.
The abovementioned office memo of AMU grants relaxation in qualifications (BEd and CTET) for teachers working in AMU Schools. It is quite outrageous that each year these ineligible teachers are granted relaxation of showing a proof of admission to B.Ed. and proof of having applied to write the competitive test of CTET in that very year, not in previous years. Moreover, such relaxation is granted in a routine manner, every year, invoking emergency powers under section 19 (3) of the AMU Act.
Since long, this is a recurring event every year, including this year 2025. The working teachers in the schools were, after all, supposed to have shown the abovementioned proof in the previous years too. Why is it renewed every year, stating “with effect from the current year”? If the working teachers didn’t avail of the relaxation in previous years, the advertisement must not provide relaxation to accommodate them. It is obvious that the said working teachers were not eligible in the first instance and have refused to acquire the qualifications required for which they were provided an opportunity. Instead of not tolerating such incompetence and continuing them to teach must be taken seriously to protect the future of the children, instead of giving them relief.
That is how some favoured candidates are recruited and continue in the services, without eligibility. Quite a large number of such teachers belong to a particular sub-region. The Director (Schools) cum OSD to VC appears to favour of the teachers of this specific sub-region. This specific irregularity has been prevailing since long, understandably because of the very long continuation of Prof. Asfar Ali Khan in the Directorate of the Schools. One wonders if such relaxations also involve illicit transactions of money. Recruitments of ineligible and incompetent teachers have been ruining the AMU schools. This particular matter of recruitments (ad hoc/temporary) of school teachers and their apparent nexus with the Director needs a thorough probing by a government agency (like CVC).
In this “wonderful” arrangement, someone is having almost unlimited power, as much as zero accountability (the accountability rests with the successive VCs-acting and full-fledged). This “highly questionable” arrangement of power without accountability, in my limited understanding as a student of modern Indian history, possibly surpasses the British East India Company’s arrangement in Bengal 1765-72.
(E) Insiders know it too well, as to which kind of clout-wielding teacher-administrators (or non-teaching professors) have aligned and re-aligned with each other to play it out.
(F) The common, innocent but genuinely agitated students may not be aware of these “dark room manipulations” of some of their teachers. Their teachers, performing in core academics including the classrooms, are quite helpless in all these shady and shoddy affairs. This fact may also not be in the knowledge of the common, innocent students. [For their critical thinking, evaluation and reflections, I have re-shared one of my columns (particularly on Rediff.Com, Nov 18, 2009), on my FB timeline, dt., 9 August 2025; also see my column, “AMU Crisis: Some Questions from an Insider”, Milli Gazette, November 1-15, 2007; and this column).
(G) Quite a lot of insiders, wrongly or rightly, feel that so many teacher-administrators are more powerful than the incumbent VC. They also feel/know where does lie the remotely-controlled power and which of the teachers, aspirants for administrative posts, and desperate to save themselves from the Vigilance/Pension worries, pay their visits to which of the remotely powerful (de facto) people.
These are common conversations among the insiders.
(H) Contracts of supplies and constructions are other varieties of stakeholders to instigate such agitations.
I hope the abovementioned diagnosis will help the interested ones how to find out solution to the problem.
Mohammad Sajjad is a Professor of History at Aligarh Muslim University.
