The All India OBC Students’ Association has been conducting a ‘satyagraha’ at the University of Hyderabad for six days straight demanding that the administration ensure proper implementation of OBC reservation on campus. The students have also been joined by employees on the campus who are demanding that the university take action on the recommendations of the National Commission of Backward Classes. Subsequently, the University issued show-cause notices to five of the employees for participating in the protests.
Last month, the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) conducted a public hearing at the campus after there were several complaints about discrimination in admissions, reserved posts going vacant, violation of reservation policies and ‘targetting’ of OBC students. There were several employees who had also written to the NCBC demanding that the University follow all norms with regard to promotions and recruitments.
After the NCBC’s intervention, the administration put together a task force to look into the complaints and some of the issues were addressed. The NCBC, earlier this month, sent notices again urging the administration to look into the complaints that they had not followed up on. There were several issues raised by the teaching and non-teaching staff which were also left to be addressed.
The AIOBCSA accused the Vice-Chancellor of committing fraud against OBCs by denying and violating reservation policy and personally targeting students, non-teaching staff, and teaching faculty who are critical about his unjust policies".
The students said that they had been waiting to hear from the administration but had so far failed to have a dialogue with them that yielded any positive results. “Instead they have sent show-cause notices to five of the employees,” Kiran, the President of the AIOBCSA said.
The show-cause notices accused the employees of misconduct under three rules. The administration stated that the employees had broken rule 33 which states that employees must maintain integrity, maintain devotion to duty, do nothing that is unbecoming of a government servant, discharge duties professionally and maintain discipline while discharging duties. The second rule tells employees that they cannot participate in demonstrations and strikes which is prejudicial to the University. The third rule directs employees to not speak to any media or - make any statement or give any opinion which is critical of any current or recent policy, or action of the State or Central government.
The Association has added now to their list of demands, the immediate withdrawal of memos and show cause notices to the office bearers of staff union and OBC employees, especially those who protested against the administration. “Awarding of first promotion (conditional) as JOAs to the 19 employees, as a one time measure, as considered to earlier, speed up the process for recruitment of compassionate appointments, immediate implementation of procedure of JNU in merging of JLA and SLA to laboratory assistant may be followed in UOH merging process of JLA and SLA positions to laboratory assistants, immediate formation of OBC grievance cell to solve OBC employees issues,” the statement said.
