The continuing staff crisis at the University of Kashmir has reached a point where it can no longer be dismissed as an administrative lapse or a temporary phase. It is now a chronic failure-one that threatens the very academic soul of one of the region’s most important public universities. What is unfolding at KU is not a matter of a few sporadic vacancies or short-term gaps; it is an unprecedented, years-long paralysis in recruitment, affecting hundreds of critical posts from senior leadership positions to essential technical and administrative roles. The scale of the crisis is staggering. Multiple director-level positions-Director of Physical Education, Director of IT&SS, Director of DIQA, Director of South Campus, Director of Kupwara Campus, Director of Convocation Complex, Director of EMMRC, and Director of Zakura Campus-have been vacant not for weeks or months, but for years. These are not optional posts; they are the pillars of planning, monitoring, and implementing academic and administrative functions across campuses. Running a university without full-time campus directors is a recipe for stagnation, confusion, and diluted accountability. Equally worrying is the prolonged vacancy of the Controller and Additional Controller of Examinations, posts central to conducting fair, timely, and transparent examinations. Similarly, DIQA-the very body responsible for maintaining the university’s quality standards-is functioning without a full-time director or deputy director. Ironically, the institution tasked with ensuring quality is itself crippled by the absence of qualified leadership.
Even at the junior administrative level, the picture is bleak. Nearly 90 junior assistant posts remain unfilled, forcing faculty members to perform clerical duties. In the library, science departments, construction division, health centre, and engineering wings, the shortages are equally crippling. The university is functioning on skeletal staff, patched together through additional charges, in-charge arrangements, and ad hoc deployment-an arrangement wholly unsuitable for a multi-campus institution of this scale.
The question that naturally arises is: Why has recruitment remained frozen for years, even when retirements occur on a predictable annual schedule? Staff retirement is not an emergency; it is an anticipated process. Any responsible institution plans recruitment cycles months-if not years-in advance. Yet in KU, critical posts are allowed to fall vacant one after another, with no proactive recruitment policy in place. The recurring response from the administration-“the posts will be filled shortly”-has become a hollow refrain, repeated for years without substantive progress.
The absence of a clear explanation only deepens the suspicion that accountability mechanisms within the university have collapsed. It is baffling that neither the Chancellor’s office nor the UGC has intervened meaningfully, even as vital academic and administrative functions erode year after year. Delays may sometimes be caused by legal or procedural barriers, but delays stretching over several years cannot be attributed to routine administrative hurdles. The consequences of this inertia are already visible. Academic departments are overstretched. Research output is suffering. Student services-from exams to library access to fieldwork coordination-are consistently delayed. Infrastructure monitoring is weakened, allowing contractors to compromise on work quality. And as vacancies multiply into the hundreds, it is only a matter of time before the university’s national rankings begin to slide sharply.
Meanwhile, thousands of highly qualified young people in J&K-many with doctorates, NET, SET, and specialised administrative qualifications-wait in vain for opportunities that the university refuses to advertise. At a time when unemployment is among the most pressing concerns, KU’s failure to recruit is not merely an administrative lapse; it is a denial of opportunity to a generation of skilled youth. What KU desperately needs now is a time-bound recruitment overhaul. All vacant posts-academic, administrative, technical, and support-must be advertised immediately, with a clear target to complete appointments before the next academic session. Simultaneously, the university must undertake an internal audit to assess whether additional posts are required.
Ad hocism and additional charge arrangements cannot sustain postgraduate teaching, specialised research, campus management, or modern IT infrastructure. A university running on temporary arrangements cannot aspire to excellence. The staff crisis at Kashmir University has dragged on for far too long. It now demands urgent intervention-not promises, but action.
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