Supreme Court issues notice to IITs for not implementing reservation in admissions, recruitment

A three-judge SC bench comprising Justices LN Rao, BR Gavai and BV Nagarathna has issued notice to IITs

Supreme Court of India has issued notices to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) over the non-implementation of reservation policies in admission in research degree programs (PhD) and recruitment of faculty.

A three-judge SC bench comprising Justices LN Rao, BR Gavai and BV Nagarathna while hearing a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) filed against premier technical institutions in the country has issued notice to IITs to respond to the allegations levelled against them. IITs will be responding to the notice within a month upon being served it.

The petition was filed by Dr Sachchida Nand Pandey (a geothermal energy researcher) who is an alumnus of IIT Madras and IIT Bombay through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey and Manish Kumar.

Pandey had alleged that the reservation policy provides the reservation to socially marginalized communities belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SC) 15%, Scheduled Tribes (ST) 7.5%, and Other Backward Classes (OBC) 27% categories are not being followed by the IITs.

There were certain other prayers in the writ petition but the Supreme Court issued notice only on the issue of reservation policy directing the IITs to follow the Reservations policy in the admission in Research Degree Programs and Recruitment of Faculty in the IITs.

Advocate Manish Kumar speaking to Shiksha said: “We were waiting for the direction from the court for long as the case was not getting listed because the court was not operating because of the second wave of the COVID-19. We are hopeful that the case will help many candidates belonging to the reserved category who are denied admission in IITs because of the discriminatory followed by their administration.”

The Central Government in June 2008 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 reservations to all posts (Associate Professors and Professors) in all streams including technical for faculty positions.

In this backdrop, the petition had stated that the IIT's were completely violating the reservation policy.

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