Women representation in the new Lucknow University Teachers Association (LUTA) body is set to be reduced from the rather embarrassing two members to just one after the April 29 LUTA elections.
The lone women representative in LUTA would be Mrinalini Singh, declared elected unopposed as the Law faculty representative. However, for the other key positions of president, general secretary, vice president, treasurer or joint secretary, only male teachers are in contest.
Women teachers make up for nearly 30 percent of the total 378 voters, said Rajiv Manohar, returning officer, LUTA elections.
Prof Vineet Kumar Verma, LUTA president said: “The disinterest of women teachers in LUTA polls could be because they aren’t interested in contesting elections. The present LUTA body had Pratibha Raj Singh (joint secretary) and Richa Pandey (arts representative).
Professor Nishi Pandey, who once contested LUTA president elections in early 2000 said: “Even today LU system is deeply rooted in a patriarchal mindset.”
“If any women candidate contests elections, it becomes a gender battle. I contested only to make a statement because one of the male teachers who was contesting the LUTA president’s post was involved in a sexual harassment case and no strong male candidate stood opposite him. The minute I filed my nomination, two other male candidate’s professor RC Rastogi and professor JV Vaishampayan also filed nominations. I backed professor Rastogi,” she said.
For the April 29 LUTA poll, three teachers contesting for LUTA chief include Mohd Ahmed (Law), Dinesh Kumar (Education) RB Singh (Physics). An equal number is contesting for general secretary including Anitya Gaurav (AIH), Ajay Arya (Geology) and Pawan Kumar Mishra (Sociology).
Five teachers are contesting for three posts of vice presidents including Arun Kumar (Education), OP Shukla (Defence Studies), Ram Milan (Commerce), Satish Chandra (Law) and S Arshad Ali Jafri (Oriental and Persian).
Three teachers elected unopposed as joint secretaries are: Nand Kishor (Law), Akash Asthana (Statistics) and Pramod Gupta (Sociology). HN Prasad (English) was elected unopposed as treasurer. All faculty representatives too have been elected unopposed. They are: Fazil Ahsan Hashmi, Jitendra Kumar and Prashant Shukla (Arts representatives). Gyan Prakash (Commerce), Hemendra Kumar Singh (Education), Alok Kumar (Fine Arts), Mrinalini Singh (Law representative) and Amit Kumar Singh and Ashutosh Singh for Science representative.