Only 30% reserved vacancies at IITs, Central universities filled in a year

Source: The post is based on the article “Only 30% reserved vacancies at IITs, Central universities filled in a year” published in The Hindu on 22nd December 2022.

What is the news?

IITs and 45 Central universities were directed to conduct the drive to fill vacancies in teaching positions reserved for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes between September 2021 to 2022.

However, the data reveals that there has not been enough recruitment in those categories.

What are the key findings of the data?

As per the Education Ministry, only 30% of identified vacancies were filled in reserved category positions at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology and Central universities.

A total of 1,439 vacancies were identified in this period. Out of which just 449 recruitments were made.

Central Universities: Out of the 45 Central universities, 33 had identified more than 1000 vacancies in these categories, of which just 212 were filled.

Moreover, amongst these 33 universities, 18 of them had recruited no SC, ST or OBC teaching faculty at all, despite having identified vacancies.

12 of the Central universities conducted almost no recruitment during this drive and gave the reason that they could not identify any vacancies in these categories.

As per the data presented in the Parliament, Central universities had a combined backlog of over 920 positions in the SC/ST/OBC categories for teaching faculty till September 2022.

IITs: Of the 23 IITs, only 10 were able to identify 342 vacancies in these categories. 13 IITs were unable to identify vacancies to be filled in this recruitment drive because they follow a “flexible cadre structure for faculty positions”.

However, except for three IITs (Hyderabad, Bhilai and Bhubaneswar), others recruited a small number of SC/ST/OBC faculty and still 358 vacancies remained at 14 IITs.

Most IITs did not recruit SC/ST/OBC candidates at the Professor and Associate Professor levels.