Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is not filling up vacancies in the Scheduled Caste (ST), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBC) categories in central universities, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has alleged.
“In the garb of NFS (Not Found Suitable) thousands of SC, ST, OBC candidates are being rejected by the Manuvadi thought process. The government refuses to acknowledge its accountability,” Rahul wrote on his X (formerly known as Twitter) handle on Friday morning.
The Rae Bareli MP was referring to a written reply submitted by junior union education minister Sukanta Mazumdar to RJD MP Manoj Jha’s question that was submitted on Wednesday.
In his reply to Jha’s query on total sanctioned and filled posts of assistant professors, assistant professors and professors in central universities for the reserved categories, Mazumdar said 111 teachers in the SC category, 24 from ST and 84 from OBC were currently engaged as professors from the combined sanctioned strength of 875 from all the three sections.
“The state of higher education and the fate of social justice in the Republic. Jai Hind. Eighty per cent professor posts for OBCs, 83 per cent for STs in central universities are vacant, says government,” Jha wrote on his X handle after the government’s response:
In associate professor posts, 308 out of the sanctioned 632 among SC, 108 out of 307 in ST and 275 out of 883 among OBC categories have been filled up.
To Jha’s question on the alleged disproportionately higher use of “Not Found Suitable” for reserved category candidates, the junior minister had replied: “Only in cases where suitable candidates were not available, irrespective of the category, the appointments were not made. The details of number of candidates “Not Found Suitable” by selection committees in central universities are not maintained centrally.”
Rahul said the government had deliberately kept those from the marginalised sections out of academia.
“In the post of professor 83 per cent of the seats in ST, 80 per cent in OBC and 64 per cent in SC are deliberately kept vacant,” Rahul alleged. “For associate professors, 65 per cent in ST, 69 per cent in OBC and 51 per cent in the SC are vacant. This is not simply carelessness. This is a well-thought conspiracy to keep the marginalised out of the education, research and policy-making process. The inadequate representation of the deprived sections is used to keep the problems faced by these communities out of the area of research,” Rahul said.
“This is completely unacceptable. The vacancies should be immediately filled up and the Bahujans should get their rights.”
On Thursday the government had admitted to lower representation from the reserved categories and women in judiciary in response to a question by an Opposition MP in the Rajya Sabha.
Rahul’s attack on the Modi government came a day after he was quoted as saying that the Congress had ceded space to the BJP because it did not take up OBC issues.
“I feel that when it came to Dalit, Adivasi, women’s issues, the Congress party was on track. And I am talking about the last 10-15 years. But I do feel that when it came to OBC issues, the Congress party’s understanding of OBC issues, the understanding of the challenges they were facing and the type of actions that the Congress party should have and could have taken, we fell short,” Rahul was quoted as telling his party’s Lok Sabha MPs and Telangana leadership at Indira Bhavan, the party headquarters.
“Maybe many people would not agree with me. Maybe many people will say, no, you are wrong. But this is a feeling I have that we allowed, we opened the space for the BJP because we were not responsive to the aspiration, to the desires of the OBCs. That’s what I feel,” he had added.
