Alka Verma-
Published on: November 26, 2021 at 14:26 IST
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court India issued notices to the Central government as well as 23 IITs on a Petition.
The filed Petition asked directions to be given to Centre as well as IITs to implement the reservation policy in admission process of research degree programs as well as during the recruitment of faculty.
A Bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao, B R Gavai and BV Nagarathna was hearing a Petition filed by academic-cum-researcher Sachchida Nand Pandey. In his Petition, Pandey had asked the Court to pass directions for the Centre to form a mechanism for resolving complaints of students and scholars regarding the harassment with utmost transparency and timely.
Adding to this, Ashwani Kumar Dubey, Counsel appearing for Pandey contended that the IITs were not following the reservation policy properly.
“The Respondents (IITs) are completely violating the reservation policies that provide for reservation to socially and marginalized communities belonging to the SC (15%), ST 17%) and OBCs (27%)’, stated the Petition.
“IITs are not following the transparent process of recruiting the faculty members, and that opens up the window for non-deserving and candidates to enter IITs through connections, which in turn increases chances of corruption, favoritism and discrimination, affecting internal ranking and technological growth of the country,” it added.
Adding to this, the Plea also stated that though in 2019, the Central Government had extended the reservation policy to all posts in all streams, the IITs have not been following it.
After listening to this, the Bench issued a notice to the Centre as well as IITs, clarifying that the notice is issued on the first prayer only, regarding the implementation of the reservation policy in the IITs.
This is in the backdrop of the current reservation policy, according to which , SCs, STs and Other Backward Classes(OBCs) are to be provided with 15%, 7.5% and 27% reservation respectively. But on paper the admission made by IITs being far less statistically.
