Less than 3 per cent of the faculty at India’s top engineering institutions — the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) — are from reserved categories. Of the 6,043 faculties in 23 IITs, just 170 — 149 Scheduled Caste and 21 Scheduled Tribe — are from the reserved categories, Union Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar informed the Lok Sabha on Monday, in response to a starred question. This means just about 2.8 per cent of those who teach at IITs join through “quota”.
There are 8,856 faculty positions at the premier engineering institutes, and reservations are only available for the entry-level posts of assistant professors and lecturers, the House was informed.IIT Dhanbad has 35 faculties from reserved categories — the most among all the premier institutes — while IIT Mandi has none. IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras and IIT Kharagpur have 5, 12, 3, 15 and 8 faculty from these categories respectively.
“IITs follow flexible cadre system. Therefore, the sanctioned strength at different grades such as professor, associate professor and an assistant professor is not fixed,” the government’s reply said.
An HRD official said the poor number of SC/ST faculty could be due to the flexible cadre system, under which IITs can recruit any grade of cadre, depending upon their requirement, as long as the overall strength does not exceed the faculty-teacher ratio of 1:10
