THE Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre and IITs on a plea seeking directions to the education institutes to follow reservation guidelines in matters of admission in research degree programmes and recruitment of faculty members. A bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao, and also comprising Justices B R Gavai and B V Nagarathna, issued the notices on a plea by Sachichida Nand Pandey, a researcher. Pandey contended that the IITs were not following the reservation policy, which prescribes reservation to socially marginalised communities belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and OBC categories, and that the Institutes were following a “completely unconstitutional, illegal and arbitrary” process. He said that the “IITs are not following the transparent process of recruiting the faculty members”, and that this “opens up the window for non-deserving and candidates to enter IITs through connections”, which in turn “increases chances of corruption, favouritism and discrimination, affecting internal ranking and technological growth of the country”. The plea said the Central government had in June 2008 written to the IIT directors 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. In November 2019, the government had also extended reservation to all posts (associate professors and professors) in all streams, including technical for faculty positions, he said on Wednesday.
