PhD scholars protest meagre fellowship hike

BHUBANESWAR: The research scholars in the State on Saturday sought 80 per cent hike in fellowship amount and threatened to intensify their agitation if the demands are not met within 30 days.

The PhD scholars said the Centre two days back revised the fellowship of Junior Research Fellow (JRF) and Senior research Fellow (SRF) - between 24 and 35 per cent. The memorandum is an insult to research scholars, they said.

Joining hands with universities and institutions at national level to place their demands before the Centre, members of Odisha Research Scholars’ Association said currently the JRFs and SRFs are getting monthly fellowship of Rs 25,000 and Rs 28,000 respectively.

After the proposed hike JRFs will get Rs 31,000 per month and SRFs will get Rs 35,000 per month with effect from January 1, 2019 which is meagre in view of the hefty amount spent as hostel and accommodation fees.

“This miserably fails to fulfill the demands of research scholars,” said Sai Aparna, a PhD scholar from Ravenshaw University, Cuttack and a member of the association. “The last hike which had been made five years back in April 2014 was around 56 per cent.”

Avnish, a research scholar from Institute of Physics, said the hike should have been implemented retrospectively from April 1, 2018 against January 1, 2019 as the fellowship is revised every four years. Besides, the grant has not been revised for thousands of MTech/MS/PDF/Non-NET research scholars for over eight years and some of them are getting just Rs 8,000 fellowship per month, Avnish said.

Biplab Bhattacharjee, a Scholar at Institute of Physics, said the fellowship is not given to scholars on time. Centre should immediately form a scientific body to interact with research scholars to address their grievances and discuss the prospects of quality and productive research in the country, the association members said.