REPRESENTATION OF SC/STS IN FACULTY OF IIT’S

• The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) has, in a reply to a query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, informed that the representation of faculty members belonging to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories is only 19, which is just above 3% compared to the strength of 577 teachers belonging to the Open Competition (OC) and Other Backward Class (OBC) categories.
• As on March 31, 2021, IIT-Madras had 515 professors, associate professors and assistant professors belonging to the Open Competition (Unreserved) category, on its rolls.
• While the strength of faculty belonging to the OBC category was 62, the number of SC and ST teachers remained at 16 and three, respectively.
• In the ST category, there was one professor, no associate professors and two assistant professors.

Women Ph.D. scholars

• With regard to the number of women candidates admitted to various Ph.D. programmes in the institute in 2018-19 and 2019-20, it was informed that 196 candidates from the General Category had been enrolled into Ph.D. programmes during the two academic years.
• The number of research scholars in the OBC (non-creamy layer) category was 74, Economically Weaker Section was five and SC and ST categories were 27 and five, respectively.
• The IIT-Madras authorities were responding to an application filed under the RTI Act by one Sai Charan, who sought to know the department-wise, category-wise and gender-wise representation of staff/candidates for the three academic years starting 2018-19.
• Details of the information sought for the academic year 2020-21 were not part of the order passed by the Central Information Commission on November 21, 2022.

Recruitment policy

• In another response to a query raised by an RTI Act applicant Vinoth Kumar Raja, who wanted to access voluminous information, mainly with regard to reservation in the direct recruitment of faculty and backlog vacancies for the reserved categories, the institution said the reservation policy had been followed as per the regulations stipulated by the Government of India.
• To a question on who could be contacted if IIT-Madras failed to follow the reservation policy in direct recruitment, the Chief Public Information Officer replied that the details sought were not “information defined under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act.”

Consistency factor

• Asked about the Ministry of Human Resources Development’s (now Ministry of Education) instruction that the institute shall make necessary provisions for the reservation of posts in favour of SCs and STs, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) referred to Clause 12(2) of the IIT-Madras Statute, which stated, “While making appointments, the appointing authority shall take into consideration the claims of the members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes consistently with the maintenance of efficiency of administration and the teaching at the institute.”

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB