IIT Roorkee: 7 expelled students denied re-admission

Nidhin Donald of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, who was part of the fact-finding team, said students often fail to identify discrimination in classrooms “because they internalise the idea of merit”.

Only 65 of the 72 students from IIT Roorkee, who had been expelled last month, were taken back after a Senate meeting on August 3. The others, the IIT said, had not cleared all their first-year papers.

“That’s a rule we have always had — they have to score minimum credits of 22. So they did not qualify under the earlier rule,” said Pradipta Banerji, director of IIT Roorkee.

A preliminary report released Tuesday by a team of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights and National Dalit Movement for Justice has found that six of the seven who were denied readmission belong to reserved categories. Between July 30 and August 1, the members of this ‘fact-finding’ team had visited IIT Roorkee and interacted with the expelled students and the administration.

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Calling the IIT’s decision to deny admission to the seven students “an act of extreme malevolence”, the report said, “It is yet another example of arbitrary decisions taken overnight without any concern for the social and psychological cost it may incur.”

Nidhin Donald of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, who was part of the fact-finding team, said students often fail to identify discrimination in classrooms “because they internalise the idea of merit”. Donald alleged that the expulsions were a focused attempt at keeping out the reserved categories. “Since these institutes cannot control government policy on intake, they come up with parallel policies that are aimed at keeping out SC/ST students,” he told The Indian Express.

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