The Delhi University in its circular dated November 1 has threatened to withold the salaries of teachers tyeaching the first semester in undergraduate scinece courses if they do not give an undertaking to teach according to the semester-based syllabi.

They have also been asked to make up for the lost time to complete the prescribed syllabi as per academic calendar notified by the varsity.

This is the second such circular, a copy of which is with the Governance Now. Earlier it had issued one on September 27 and had clearly mentioned that in case of non-submission of the undertaking, the salary for the month of September 2010 was not to be released and pay and allowances paid after July 21 were to be recovered. Charanpreet Kaur, a lecturer at Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College, and some of her colleagues' September salary was delayed by few days when they refused to give the undertaking. She says, "We first requested the principal and then protested to convince him to release our salaries. But in many colleges teachers were either forced to give undertaking or were not paid."

She said that this time also teachers will protest to get their salaries. Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) president Aditya Narayan calls the circular an illegal one.

He says, "This circular has never been passed by the Executive Council of the university. We do not recognise it."

DUTA has been protesting the manner in which the semester system has been implemented in the 13 science courses by the previous vice-chancellor, Professor Deepak Pental. DUTA says that it is violation of the university’s Acts and Ordinances. And to show their dissatisfaction, the DUTA had first asked teachers to dissociate themselves from the admission process.

And later it was followed by the series of strikes. On October 28th it called off its week-long strike after the Delhi High Court disapproved of the manner in which students’ careers were being held at ransom.