UGC last week announced a new mechanism for implementing faculty reservations by calculating total posts by departments rather than by institution, as is the case now.
New Delhi: Within days of announcing a new faculty reservation mechanism for universities, the Centre is preparing to file a review petition to undo the move that has already sparked a controversy.
Sources told ThePrint that an inter-ministerial committee will immediately be set up to examine the feasibility of filing a review petition before the Supreme Court.
Following an Allahabad High Court order — upheld by the Supreme Court — the University Grants Commission last week announced a new mechanism for implementing faculty reservations, henceforth- calculating total posts departments wise rather than institution wise, as is the case now.
The move is likely to have serious implications as it is believed that this will severely cut down number of posts available for SC and ST faculty members. Considering that reserved faculty posts already go vacant in huge numbers, the new policy is likely to further shrink representation of marginalised sections across the university system.
ThePrint has learnt that the inter-ministerial committee will have representatives from the law, social justice and tribal affairs ministries besides the HRD ministry and it will be tasked with looking at the feasibility of filing the review petition at the earliest possible.
The decision to set up a committee was taken after rounds of hectic meetings in the UGC and the HRD ministry on the issue. The turnaround also raised several questions over how the ministry and the UGC moved to implement the new policy without examining its full implications.
The order under review
On 5 March, the UGC had written to all central, state and deemed to be universities getting grants-in-aid, announcing that reservations for SC/ST teacher posts would henceforth be implemented department wise rather than institution wise.
Currently, the reservations are calculated as per total faculty posts in a university. The new mechanism, based on the order of the Allahabad High Court, has said that reservation will be calculated by department instead.
The high court had struck down a UGC circular on institution-wise quota to fill vacant SC/ST posts pointing out that there were departments without any SC/ST teachers.
The Allahabad High court order was upheld by the Supreme Court and on the basis of the advice tendered by the department of personnel and training and recommendations of the UGC and the HRD ministry, clauses 6 (c) and 8 (a) (v) have been added to the UGC Guidelines of 2006.
The new clauses call for preparing a roster system as a unit for all levels of teachers and this roster will be applied to the total number of posts in each faculty category. The UGC communication also asked each institute to prepare a fresh roster within a month.