THE central executive committee of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) has condemned the seemingly deliberate attempt by centrally funded technical institutions (CFTIs) to bypass reservation norms. Condemning the lack of initiative on the part of the ministry of education to address the issue of severe under-representation of students belonging to SC, ST and OBC categories in technical education and research, it has demanded an immediate intervention from the president of India on the issue. The situation is grave and deplorable, hence the SFI demanded its immediate redressal.

Data provided by the minister for education, in response to questions raised CPI(M) Rajya Sabha members Elamaram Kareem and Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, has once again proven the blatant disregard for the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Act, 2006 in the centrally funded technical institutions.

Indian Institute of Science (IISc)

• OBC category has almost negligible presence at 1 per cent of total admissions during 2016-2018.
• Zero admissions from SC and OBC categories in the integrated PhD programme during two consecutive years.

31 National Institutes of Technology

• Particularly alarming has been the lack of admissions of ST category in some NITs. NIT in Calicut, Patna, Nagpur and Kurukshetra, for instance, have not admitted a single ST category student in the past three years. In some other NITs, there have been zero admission from the ST category across different years in this period. Similar situation has been observed for SC category also at certain NITs.
• Of the total students admitted at NIT Calicut over the three years, only 5.1 per cent belonged to SC category. And at Jaipur, only 5.2 per cent came from the SC category. The bigger NITs have admitted comparatively fewer students from SC category.
• NIT Nagpur seems to not have admitted any student from the SC, ST and OBC categories during these three years.
• More than 70 per cent of the admissions in NIT Surathkal, Srinagar, Kurukshetra and Uttarakhand belonged to the general category.

17 Indian Institutes of Information Technology

• The five centrally funded IIITs have admission levels of SCs and STs at 11 per cent and 1.9 per cent of the total 638 admissions.
• The rest 12 run on a PPP model admitted very low number of students from SC, ST and OBC categories -- 6.5 per cent, 1.5 per cent and 15.6 per cent respectively of the total 340 admissions. Many of them have not recruited any students from these categories.
• IIIT Gwalior, Kancheepuram and Kurnool did not admit any ST student during these years.

7 Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research

• Although IISERs have a better reservation compliance in their BS-MS programme, certain violations were found. IISER Thiruvananthapuram fell behind in ST reservation compliance.
• IISER Pune and Tirupati had a dropout rate of more than 65 per cent from the reserved categories.

Poor Implementation of Reservation Policy

As opposed to the recommendation given by the Oversight Committee for the Implementation of the 2006 Reservation Policy, the ministry’s response proves that there is no special programme under the government to train research aspirants for selection to PhD programmes at these elite institutions. Instead IISc offers a familiarization programme for applicants selected for PhD interviews belonging to SC and ST categories. Further the response received is ambiguous with respect to the training offered for GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) examination by the government for the students belonging to SC/ST/OBC. The response claims that MTech students belonging to these categories are given GATE training in the relevant disciplines, but MTech students would have already written and cleared GATE.

Following SFI’s efforts, the poor implementation of the CEI Act, 2006 in PhD at IITs was confirmed by the Ministry of Education last year with admissions of SC, ST & OBC at 9 per cent, 2.1 per cent and 23 per cent of the total. Although an expert panel was set up to improve the implementation of reservation in IITs, the committee did a shoddy work in addressing the issues at PG/PhD level. Moreover, it went on to recommend for exempting IITs from adhering to the faculty reservation norms.

The persistent violation of reservation norms in the nation’s premier technical institutions has contributed to the underrepresentation of teaching faculty from the marginalised and backward groups at these institutions. This has proven to be a major hindrance in achieving an inclusive learning atmosphere. B R Ambedkar had frequently stressed on the importance of advanced education in science and technology over other disciplines for the uplift of dalits and other oppressed groups. The data released by the ministry shows that there is a clear lack of compliance in achieving the same.

The SFI is committed to carry on the struggles for safeguarding the rights of the oppressed sections in the country. The SFI calls upon all its units across the country to organise protests and campaigns highlighting the crude manner in which social justice is being murdered in educational institutions. We reiterate our demand for a legislation to check proper implementation of reservation and also against caste-based discrimination which results in alarming number of drop-outs in education institutions. There was a complete scrapping of reservation system in IIM Ahmedabad. The Ministry of Education must immediately release a white paper on the social category-wise distribution of admissions at all programmes offered at the UG, PG and PhD levels of every central educational institutions, for the last five years, along with their gender-wise data.This would help the society verify the compliance of the CEI Act, 2006 across all the institutions. The SFI demands an immediate intervention from the president of India on the issue. It also appeals to all other members of parliament to take up this alarming issue in the ongoing session and also join with the democratic sections in the fight for social justice.