Panjab University’s (PU) revised house allotment rules have come under fire from the non-teaching employees’ union, which alleges discrimination and warns of mass agitation, even as authorities deny any fresh changes to the policy.
PU registrar YP Verma said the criteria are the same as in previous years and introduce no new provisions. However, the Panjab University Non-Teaching Employees Federation (PUNTEF) claims the approved recommendations effectively raise the eligibility bar by linking it to the pay scale of an assistant professor under the UGC 2016 norms, a move it termed “illogical, illegal and unjustified” for non-teaching staff. “Being in the non-teaching staff, we’ve always felt some sort of discrimination from the teaching staff,” said PUNTEF president Honey Thakur, alleging that the new norms further deepen that divide.
In a letter to the vice-chancellor on Thursday, the federation alleged that the December 2024 committee recommendations were cleared without following the due process prescribed in the PU calendar. “A newly recruited teacher is eligible from day one. Our employees with years of service are being made ineligible overnight,” the letter stated.
The union argued that applying a faculty pay benchmark to non-teaching employees is inherently flawed. It pointed out that while faculty salaries saw a roughly 3.7-fold increase under UGC revisions, non-teaching staff pay rose 6.97 times, from a much lower base under Punjab government scales, yet most employees would still fall short of the prescribed threshold.
The federation has demanded that the recommendations be referred back to a joint session of the house allotment committee and that no fresh allotments be processed under the revised norms in the interim. It also alleged “preconceived bias” in the review process, citing minutes of the December 17, 2024 meeting.
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