Mumbai: Students at IIT Bombay have no classes today. At least 450 professors at their college are taking the day off to protest the new salaries offered to them by the government. The professors are holding a silent protest march on campus.
IIT Delhi will shut down on Tuesday. Similar mass causal leave was taken by the IITs at Madras and Kharagpur on Friday.
IIT professors say the raise promised to them by the Sixth Pay Commission is insufficient.
So what is the IIT faculty demanding? Higher salaries with raises between 30 and 50 per cent. According to teachers' calculations, an IIT recruit loses 23 lakh rupees over the span of a career, compared with an IAS officer. They argue that since every professor has to be a PhD, they lose six years of pay while they are studying. And for this, they want to be given an additional Rs 15,000 per professor.