Teachers at IIT Kharagpur today went on a hunger strike without disrupting work to protest the Union HRD ministry’s recent recommendations of the pay hike.

While undergraduate classes were suspended, took postgraduate classes and the work in the institute’s laboratory went on as usual. Around 140 teachers skipped their breakfast and lunch while the rest are on vacation.

“It is Ganghigiri by compulsion, not by choice. When our voice is not heard in the ministry, what option do we have?” said Kanchan Chowdhury, president of the IIT Kharagpur Teachers’ Federation.

“Till late in the evening, we deliberated on how to protest. Can we protest as happens in other institutes, or like pilots or bank employees do? But we could not do it since we are teachers,” said a teacher, adding it was the saddest day of his career spanning 36 years at the institute where he was once an undergraduate student and a teacher now.

“If teachers at the IIT get the best salaries, why are then 30 per cent seats vacant in IITs across the country? The ministry claims it is the best salary. If it is so, one should expect all the seats to be filled by April next year,” said another teacher.

After the meeting of the representatives from seven IITs in Kolkata, where the teachers discussed the second recommendations of the HRD ministry on pay hike, the teachers decided to go on a strike at all the seven IITs. The teachers want a meeting with the ministry, which has been denied so far.