The Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) on Tuesday lashed out against the university’s “hasty and authoritarian move” to push forward with its proposal to get an Institute of Eminence (IoE) status without prior statutory approvals, it said.

“Though the V-C has called an emergency meeting of the Executive Council to get formal approval for the IoE proposal, he has not allowed the statutory authorities any reasonable time to apply their minds and debate the implications of the problematic proposal,” DUTA said in a statement.

The union argued that prima facie, the proposal was a “blueprint for steady commercialisation of the university through an undertaking to start self-financing courses and online degree programmes at a massive scale..”

The IoE proposal put forward by DU undertakes to hike student fee, hire up to 20% foreign faculty on an incentive-based differential pay structure, DUTA said.

It also bound the university to an obligation to raise at least ₹95 crore towards meeting recurring expenses like salaries and ₹350 crore towards non-recurring capital expenditure by 2025, the statement read.