Use quota policy in faculty hiring, government tells IITs, IIMs

NEW DELHI: The ministry of human resource development earlier this week issued a directive to central government technical institutions like IITs and IIMs to fully implement reservation policy in faculty recruitment, including at senior positions.
According to provisions in the Constitution, all government institutions in the country are mandated to provide 15% reservation for scheduled castes, 7.5% for scheduled tribes and 27% for other backward castes (OBCs).
The IITs and IIMs have not been implementing reservations in entirety. While IITs apply reservation in teacher appointment only at the entry level — assistant professors, at IIMs, 96% of the faculty are from the general category and refers to a communication dated 1975 which allowed technical and scientific institutions to hire faculty of their choice.
In an official order issued on Wednesday, the HRD ministry’s department of higher education said the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act was notified on July 9 to provide for reservation in teaching positions following which the HRD ministry also issued a notification and stated that any further recruitment has to be done as per the roster prepared.
With the new directive, the institutions will now have to ensure reservations in senior faculty positions as well — professors and associate professors. The same rule will apply to IISERs, the central government institutes dedicated purely to research.
According to senior IIM-Ahmedabad official, “Since it’s an order from the government we will be implementing the policy henceforth. We are looking into the order.”