No reservation to ST under court orders: Govt
The government has admitted before a parliamentary committee on OBC welfare that the Scheduled Tribes (STs) would virtually be left without reservation in college and university teachers’ jobs if each department is considered the unit for calculating the quotas, as mandated by the Allahabad High Court and okayed by the Supreme Court.
The human resource development (HRD) ministry officials told the committee that their assertion is based on a 13-point roster system that the department of personnel and training (DoPT) unveiled last week. HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday and again on Friday that the government has provided an analysis of vacancies in 30 universities in its review petition to appreciate why the reservation should be university based and not on the basis of vacancies in each department.
The roster reserves the first three posts for general candidates, the 4th, 8th and 12th for OBCs, the 7th for Dalits, and the 10th for the economically weaker sections among the upper castes.
For reasons unexplained, the roster has two positions at the 13th slot, the first for general candidates and the second for the Scheduled Tribes, which practically means the 14th post is reserved for the tribal candidates. These positions are deemed to be consistent with the Dalit, tribal and OBC quotas of 15 per cent (one in seven), 7.5 per cent (one in 13) and 27 per cent (one in four), respectively.
If all the departments of a university were clubbed during a particular round of recruitments as done until the court intervention, the number of vacancies would generally be large enough to allow all the quotas to be adequately implemented.
But since individual departments tend to have only a few vacant posts, such percentages result in small fractions, meaning the quota candidates lose out. A Dalit candidate has to wait for the seventh vacancy in the department and a tribal candidate for the 14th, which might take years.
The STs would virtually be left without reservation in college and university teachers’ jobs if each department is considered the unit for calculating the quotas