MHRD recruits 1,200 IIT, NIT students to teach in rural colleges

The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has hired fresh pass-outs from premier institutes, such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), to fill vacant posts of about 1,225 assistant professors in 53 government engineering colleges in 11 backwards states.

The students, 293 PhD and 932 MTech scholars, have already joined the engineering colleges as contractual staff on a monthly salary of Rs 70,000. Their salaries, however, would be paid through a World Bank-aided project for improving quality of engineering graduates in states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir. 

MHRD officials said these students were hired on contract as the law to provide quota to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in government jobs did not apply to contractual jobs. 

The government didn’t elaborate its plan of employing these students upon completion of their three-year contract.

“This is the first time that such a measure has been taken to improve the quality of education. It would help about 100,000 engineering students in the most backwards areas,” MHRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said.

Javadekar said around 5,000 students had applied for these jobs. “They were selected through a rigorous selection process.” The minister said the best faculty were sent to seven districts in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.