While IITs were being feted in India and abroad to mark their golden jubilee, the one in the Capital was being hounded by the National Commission for SCs and STs to re-admit an expelled Dalit student or face legal consequences.As a result, IIT Delhi moved the High Court. On February 13, the Delhi HC stayed the proceedings initiated by the commission against the institute for allegedly discriminating against the expelled Dalit student, R. Kalyanasundaram.Justice C.K. Mahajan passed the stay order on the basis of IIT’s contention that the commission, which is vested with the powers of a civil court to enforce attendance for its proceedings, has no jurisdiction to review its orders and re-open a matter already decided.Last September, the commission had rejected Kalyanasundaram’s complaint that he was thrown out of the Ph.D. course in mechanical engineering because he belonged to the Scheduled Caste. The commission had then upheld the IIT’s defence that Kalyanasundaram had been struck off the rolls, along with five others, in July 2002 because of his failure to get the minimum prescribed marks in his first semester. As a centre of excellence acknowledged the world over, IIT requires its Ph.D. students to maintain a minimum cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 7.50 on a 10 point scale. But Kalyanasundaram scored a CGPA of just 3, the lowest among the six.Then, commission member C. Chellappan had pointed that when students who obtained CGPA of 6 were not allowed to continue, ‘‘I do not think that there is any justification to request the authorities to reconsider’’ Kalyanasundaram’s case.But, barely two months later, IIT received another communication from the commission, on behalf of its chairman, Bizay Sonkar Shastri, asking its officers to provide further material in the same case. IIT then refused, asserting that the commission had no power to review its decision. This provoked the commission to draw an adverse inference against IIT.On November 27, Shastri’s office wrote to IIT stating that in the absence of any further material from IIT, ‘‘the commission has been compelled to conclude that discrimination has been ensured (sic) against an SC student’’. The letter also directed the institute to re-admit Kalyanasundaram with immediate effect.Not surprisingly, IIT refused to comply with the commission’s order. The situation worsened when the commission formally issued summons to IIT Director R S Sirohi to appear in person before Shastri on February 14. Just a day before Sirohi was in danger of disobeying the summons — which the commission could have enforced by getting him arrested — the High Court intervened with a stay order. Now, the commission will, in due course, have to establish the basis on which it assumed the power to review its orders.
