New Delhi, Sep 17 (PTI) Nearly 200 assistant professors who were recruited on a temporary basis under a special Education Ministry project celebrated Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday on Friday, and demanded the regularisation of their services as a return gift.

The faculty members hired under the third phase Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme, initiated with the World Bank, have been protesting at Mandi House demanding they be made permanent.

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Sanjeev Vishwakarma, who teaches in Assam, said, "One of the protesting faculty members had brought his children along and they cut the birthday cake. They demanded that their father's job be regularised as a return gift from the prime minister."

All the protesting faculty members are IIT and NIT graduates.

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Under the TEQIP-III project, 1,500 assistant professors were recruited on a temporary basis for 71 engineering institutions in rural areas with focus on 12 states.

The project is aimed at improving the quality of technical education especially in low income states by providing highly qualified faculty members to existing engineering colleges.

After the project period, the state governments were supposed to recruit them, Vishwakarma said, adding they protested at Jantar Mantar and were given assurance that their case would be taken up with the respective state governments and were also granted extension for another six months.

“We are staring at unemployment and nothing has been done for our absorption. We want a permanent policy for our absorption and the colleges where we were teaching recruit us permanently," he said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)