Supreme Court Issues Notice In Plea Seeking Directions To IITs To Follow Reservation Policy For Faculty Recruitment, Research Degree Admissions

The Supreme Court today issued notice to Centre and IIT's in a writ petition seeking direction to all the twenty-three Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) to follow the reservation policy in the admission in research degree program and recruitment of faculty in the IITs.

The matter was listed before the bench of Justices LN Rao, BR Gavai and BV Nagarathna.

The petition filed by Dr. Sachchida Nand Pandey (a geothermal energy researcher) through Advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey had alleged that the reservation policy that provides the reservation to socially marginalized community belonging to the SC (15%), ST (7.5%), and OBC (27%) categories are not being followed by the IITs.

It was argued that the process of taking admissions in the Research Program and appointment of faculty members by the IITs was "completely unconstitutional, illegal and arbitrary".

"IITs are not following the transparent processes for recruiting the faculty members which open up the window for non-deserving and useless candidates to enter into the IITs through the connection that increased the chances of corruption, favoritism and discrimination," the petition stated.

It was submitted in the petition that the Central Government in June 2008 had written to IIT Directors (Kharagpur, Madras, Bombay, Kanpur, Roorkee, and Guwahati) 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.

Further, in November 2019, the Government of India had extended reservation to all posts (Associate Professors and Professors) in all streams including technical for faculty positions.

In this backdrop the petition had stated that the IIT's were completely violating the reservation policy.

Dr Sachchida Nand Pandey in the petition had also sought for directing the Union of India to make a mechanism for resolving the problems faced by Students/Scholars and to decide the research harassment complaints with transparency and in a time-bound manner.

Relief for directing the respondents to constitute a committee of Technical Experts to review the performance of existing Faculty, cancel the appointment of non-performing faculty and for not following the reservation policy, and also for the formation of Transparent recruitment policy was also sought.

Case Title: Dr Sachchida Nand Pandey v Union of India and Ors| WP(C) 330/2021

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