Restore earlier faculty quota system, Rahul to Javadekar

Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday urged Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar to restore the "200-point roster system" of reservation mechanism for faculties in universities.

Gandhi in a letter to Javadekar said the adoption of the "13-point roster system" in place of the earlier system, has "severely eroded" the spirit of reservation and called for bringing an ordinance to suspend all recruitment till the matter was resolved.

Under the new system each department is taken as a unit for implementing recruitment and reservation policy for teachers. Under the earlier system, the entire university was taken as an unit for reservation and recruitment.

"Thousands of SC, ST, OBC candidates aspiring to teach in colleges/universities will be denied the opportunity. The departure from the '200-point roster system' has led to widespread protests and deserves your urgent intervention," said Gandhi.

Gandhi also pointed out to Javadekar recently informing Parliament that of the 158 faculty posts advertised by the Central Universities of Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Punjab since March 5, 2018, not even a single post was reserved for SCs/STs under the '13-point' roster system.

"By your own ministry's admission, 43 posts would have been reserved for SCs/STs under the '200-point' system," wrote Gandhi.

Gandhi said: "It would be expedient to pass an ordinance at the earliest and suspend all recruitment pending resolution of this matter."

Besides the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and other opposition parties have demanded restoration of the earlier system, contending the new system deprives SCs, STs and OBCs of reservation benefits in higher education institutions.

The new system has also faced stiff opposition from teachers.

They said as opposed to the earlier system, where 99 posts were reserved for SCs, STs and OBCs and 101 for the unreserved, under the new system only the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth posts will be unreserved in a department.

Also the fourth will be reserved for OBCs, the seventh for SCs, the 14th for STs and the eighth and 12th for OBCs, while the ninth, 10th and 11th will be unreserved.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) in March 2018 announced that a department should be considered the base unit to calculate number of teaching posts for the reserved categories following an order by the Allahabad High Court in April in 2017.

The matter is before the apex court with the Centre filing a petition seeking review of the top court's verdict, dismissing a petition pleading restoration of the earlier system.

--IANS

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