Plea in Supreme Court alleges all 23 IITs violating Govt directive to implement reservation in faculty recruitment, research degree admissions

A plea has been moved before the Supreme Court alleging that all twenty-three Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are violating reservation policy that provides reservation to Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) communities and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in granting admission to research degree programs and recruitment of faculty. .The plea by a well-known geothermal energy researcher, Dr Sachchida Nand Pandey has contended that the process of taking admissions in the research program and appointment of faculty members by all the IITs is “completely unconstitutional, illegal and arbitrary”.."The Respondent 2-24 (IITs) are not following the guidelines of reservation as per the constitutional mandate. That Respondents no. 2 to 24 is completely violating the reservation policy that provides the reservation to socially marginalized community belonging to the SC (15 percent), ST (7.5 percent) and OBC (27 percent) categories," the petition filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey states. .It was in June 2008, that the Central government wrote to IIT Directors (Kharagpur, Madras, Bombay, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati) to implement reservation for SC, ST and OBC categories in requirement to teaching post at assistant professor level in science and technology, and at all levels (assistant, associate and professor) in humanities and management department.In November 2019, Government of India extended reservation to all posts (associate professors and professors) in all streams including technical for faculty position..However, the IITs are completely violating the reservation policy, it has been claimed. .The plea has also highlighted lack of representation of faculty members from the northern, central and Hindi speaking states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh which, it has been claimed is very low when compared to their proportional share of national population.."As per the RTI replies received by the Petitioner from the Respondents itself shows that the percentages of faculty belong to the abovementioned states are around 4.91, 7.92 and 27.65 percent in IIT Tirupati, IIT Madras and IIT Gandhinagar, respectively. Similarly in IIT Kharagpur its around 13.77 percent after providing incomplete data. The combined data of RTI and the Print shows that it is 7.16 percent. The remaining IITs didn't provide the state and category wise data requested by the Petitioner in his RTI application," the petitioner has contended. .The petition has also alleged that IITs are not following transparent process for recruiting faculty members which opens window for non-deserving and useless candidates to enter into the IITs through contacts.This has increased the chances of corruption, favoritism and discrimination which are creating huge effects on the internal ranking, technological growth and technological backwardness of country even after 70 years of independence, the petition has alleged..The plea has further said that IITs never reveal the standards set by them for recruiting its faculty Members and candidates are also kept in dark about the same. "The IITs usually don’t inform the candidates who are not being called or shortlisted for interview. It is mentioned that “no interim correspondence whatsoever will be entertained to the candidates regarding conduct and result of interview and reasons for not being called for interview or selection," the petition states. .Besides faculty recruitment, IIT are also in violation of reservation norms for admission to the research degree programs (Doctor of Philosophy), the petitioner has contended."The government of India norms require 49.5% seats to be reserved for SC (15 percent), ST (7.5 percent) and OBC (27 percent) scholars, but in the last 5 years, IITs have admitted only 2.1, 9.1 and 23.2 percent of ST, SC and OBCs category scholars. From 2015 to 2019, IIT Bombay did not admit a single PhD scholar from ST category in 11 departments and centre(s) out of 26,” says the plea..The petitioner has, therefore, sought a direction to all IITs to implement the reservation policy in the admission to research degree programs and recruitment of faculty. .Besides issues relating to recruitment, the petition has also raised concerns regarding lack of proper mechanism for adjudicating harassment related complaints of the students against their professors and management. "Professors of the Respondent No.2-24 are regularly harassing the students and scholars and the grievances of the students and 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," the plea has alleged. The petitioner has, therefore, sought directions to create a mechanism for resolving the students/scholar’s problems, and for addressing research harassment complaints. .The petitioner has also asked the Court to issue a direction to all IITs to constitute a committee of technical experts to review the performances of existing faculty, cancel the appointment of non-performing of faculty and for not following the reservation policy. The petitioner has further sought formulation of a transparent recruitment policy.