patna even as elections to the patna university teachers association puta being held after a gap of more than six years are scheduled for july 17 there is hardly any sign of electioneering on the campus it seems teachers have lost their interest in the activities of the association these days the indifference of the teaching community towards university elections can be gauged from the fact that at least four posts of puta executive have remained vacant as no teacher filed nomination papers for these posts furthermore all those teachers who filed their nomination papers on the remaining 15 posts of executive membership from different constituencies were declared elected unopposed this year there are only 17 teachers in the fray contesting for the seven key offices of the association though the elections are not being fought on any political considerations or any development agenda the contestants are clearly divided into two teams there is virtually a straight contest on all posts the presence of some independent contestants notwithstanding one team is led by abhay kumar of patna science college who is the sitting general secretary of the association he is contesting for the post of president other contestants from this team include kameshwar pandit of pmir department and kumar satyendra yadav of patna science college vicepresidents suheli mehta of magadh mahila college general secretary supan prasad singh of vanijya mahavidyalay and amrita of patna womens college joint secretaries and deep narayan of patna training college treasurer the other team led by s b roy of b n college contesting for presidenship consists of saroj sinha of economics department and sheo sagar prasad of b n college vicepresidents vibhas ranjan of b n college general secretary namrata of magadh mahila college and birendra kumar of patna law college joint secretaries and md ziaul hassan of magadh mahila college treasurer as many as five teachers are contesting the elections as independent not aligning with the either teamit may be mentioned here that patna university has had a glorious history of organizing statewide teachers movements against academic and social problems since its inception in 1917 with the reorganization of patna university as a teachingcumresidential university a separate affiliated university known as bihar university was established in 1952 with all the colleges located outside the city of patna this led to formation of two separate statelevel organizations of college and university teachers the puta and bihar university teachers association the former as a matter of fact remained in the vanguard of the teachers movement in bihar during 1950s by 196061 teachers associations were formed in all the universities of the state the teachers of other universities expressed their solidarity with the teachers of pu and opposed the state government move to change the teachingcumresidential character of pu consequently the state government had to withdraw the concerned bill the federation of university teachers associations of bihar futab came into being on may 7 1967 at a convention of delegates of teachers associations of all