Plea In Supreme Court Seeks Direction To IITs To Follow Govt's Reservation Policy For Faculty Recruitment, Research Degree Admissions

The plea alleges that the reservation policy that provides the reservation to socially marginalized community belonging to the SC (15%), ST (7.5%), and OBC (27%) categories are not being followed by the IITs.

The plea, which has been filed by Dr. Sachchida Nand Pandey (well known geothermal energy researcher) through Advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, contends that the process of taking admissions in the Research Program and appointment of faculty members by the IITs are "completely unconstitutional, illegal and arbitrary".

Significantly, the plea alleges,

"IITs are not following the transparent processes for recruiting the faculty members which open up the window for non-deserving and useless candidates to enter into the IITs through the connection that increased the chances of corruption, favoritism and discrimination."

Significantly, in June 2008 the Central government had written to IIT Directors (Kharagpur, Madras, Bombay, Kanpur, Roorkee, and Guwahati) to implement the reservation for SC, ST, and OBC categories in the requirement to a teaching post at Assistant Professor Level in Science and Technology, and at all levels (Assistant, Associate and Professor) in Humanities and Management Department.

Further, in November 2019, the Government of India had extended reservation to all posts (Associate Professors and Professors) in all streams including technical for faculty position.

In this backdrop, the plea alleges that the IITs are completely violating the reservation policy.

"The government of India norms requires 49.5% seats to be reserved for SC (15%), ST (7.5%) and OBC (27%) scholars. In the last 5 years, IITs have admitted only 2.1, 9.1, and 23.2% of ST, SC and OBCs category scholar. From 2015 to 2019, IIT Bombay did not admit a single PhD scholar from ST category in 11 departments and Centre out of 26", the plea adds.

Further, the plea also contends that the faculty members belonging to the Northern, Central and Hindi speaking States (i.e., Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, J&K, and Laddakh) are very low as compared to their populations (50% of the national population).

Significantly, the plea also alleges that the professors teaching at IITs regularly harass the students and scholars and the grievances of the students and that the scholars are not being resolved as the respondents do not have any proper mechanism to adjudicate the harassment-related complaints of the students against their professors and management.

Further, stressing that it is the fundamental right of the candidates to know about the short-listing criteria and weightage are given for different components during faculty selection, the plea states,

"IITs have never exposed about the standards set by the IITs for recruiting its faculty Members. The candidate who applies for the faculty post is completely unaware of the shortlisting criteria. The IITs usually do not inform the candidates who are not being called or shortlisted for interview"

Prayers of the plea:-

• Direction to the Respondents to follow the Reservations policy in the admission in Research Degree Programs and Recruitment of Faculty in the IITs.
• Direction to UOI to make a mechanism for resolving the problems faced by Students/Scholars and to decide the research harassment complaints with transparency and in a time-bound manner.
• Direction to the respondents to constitute a committee of Technical Experts to review the performance of existing Faculty, cancel the appointment of non-performing of faculty and for not following the reservation policy, and also for the formation of Transparent recruitment policy.