Education: More than half the faculty positions reserved for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 40 percent of those reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in central institutions of higher education are vacant, according to the Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal. In the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) more than 60 percent of SC and OBC reserved positions have not been filled. In the case of the STs, almost 80 percent of positions are empty.
Despite the high levels of vacancies, Pokhriyal claimed that, “Now, after implementation of ‘The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019’, the OBC reservation has been implemented at all levels.”
The pattern of unfilled positions continues with the Central Universities as well, where in the case of professors, only nine of the 137 positions reserved for ST candidates have been filled. This leaves 93 percent of these posts vacant. Likewise, less than five percent of the 378 professor positions reserved for OBCs have been filled.
In this case, the minister held the universities accountable for this lapse, saying that “the onus of filling up the teaching posts lies on Central Universities which are autonomous bodies created under acts of Parliament.”
According to the data presented in the Lok Sabha on Monday, there are now 6,074 vacant positions at the 42 universities, of which 75 percent are in reserved categories. In June 2019, the University Grants Commission (UGC) had given the universities a deadline of six months to fill the vacancies, failing which they said that their grants would be withheld.
Read this article on the lack of diversity in India’s social sector.