70% of teaching posts vacant: Odisha Governor sets November deadline for university recruitment

Bhubaneswar: Odisha's Governor and Chancellor of universities, Dr Hari Babu Kambhampati, on Saturday ordered the vice-chancellors of state public universities to initiate recruitment for vacant teaching posts by the first week of November and complete it by the end of the month. The directive, issued at a meeting at Lok Bhavan, is an official admission of the scale of the crisis: about 70 per cent of teaching posts in the state's public universities are vacant, and more than 1,400 faculty positions lie empty, according to Ravenshaw University vice-chancellor Prof. Arka Kumar Das Mohapatra. Higher Education Minister Suryabanshi Suraj, Commissioner-cum-Secretary Arabinda Agrawal, vice-chancellors and registrars of the state universities and senior officials attended the meeting. Kambhampati said filling the vacant teaching posts was "the next major challenge" after the appointment of vice-chancellors — recalling that 14 vice-chancellors were appointed on a single day after he assumed office as Governor. "Merit should be the priority in the appointment of teaching faculty. Quality and merit cannot be compromised," he said, urging universities to call all eligible applicants for interviews rather than eliminating candidates through extensive initial shortlisting. The Governor also asked universities to pursue green certification, citing the platinum certification the Odisha Lok Bhavan received from the Indian Green Building Council. The November deadline is, in effect, a confession: years of administrative neglect have hollowed out the state's higher education, leaving lecture halls without teachers and students without mentors. That the order must come from the Chancellor — rather than flowing from the Higher Education Department of the BJP government led by Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi — says its own story about where university staffing sat on the government's list of priorities. In April, the Governor had endorsed the Odisha State Public Universities (Reservation in Teachers' Cadre) Act, 2026, meant to speed up filling vacancies with proper representation for Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes. Six months on, the posts remain largely unfilled. Deadlines are easy to announce. Filling more than 1,400 teaching posts — on merit, in a matter of weeks — is the test that will decide whether Saturday's meeting was governance or theatre.