Ambedkarite student group of Pondicherry University claims violation of reservation policy in admissions

The Ambedkar Students’ Association of Pondicherry University has alleged that there has been a violation of reservation policy in the postgraduate and integrated course admissions in the University. The claims range from extra seats being allotted to the Economically Weaker Section category to complete non-implementation of the reservation policy in some departments.

“Ten departments/programmes in Integrated Programmes including Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics are in direct violation of the constitutional provisions and rules framed by the MHRD and assurances made in the Parliament. These departments have implemented more than the maximum permitted ten per cent of the reservation to the EWS category in admissions,” the ASA said in a statement. They also claimed that 33 departments have implemented EWS reservations without implementing SC, ST and OBC reservations properly.

“This is in violation of various laws and rules including the Central Educational Institutions (Reservations in Admissions) Act, 2006. The rule that SC, ST, OBC reservations are to be mandatorily followed by Central Universities had been reiterated by the UGC in multiple letters to the Registrar in 2016 and as recently as October 2020,” they added.

The Association also alleged that zero admissions are being given to the physically handicapped category students in 20 departments, “An additional ten departments are not filling the three per cent mandated quota for the differently-abled. Eight departments have zero admissions to students belonging to tribal communities under the quota. Also, 34 departments are not ensuring a 7.5 per cent mandatory reservation for Scheduled Tribes. Nineteen departments have not filled vacancies for students belonging to the Scheduled Caste communities. Departments like Anthropology and MBA have not even filled half its vacancies,” the student group alleges.“Twenty-eight departments have not filled the mandatory OBC reservation and 48 departments have zero implementation of the 25 per cent reservation guaranteed by Pondicherry University to students belonging to Puducherry,” the Association said in its statement released today.

Vicky Saw, a member of the ASA says he’s disappointed that the University was keener on implementing the EWS quota and was not ensuring reservation for the SC, ST, OBC students, “It has been repeatedly said that reservation is not a poverty alleviation scheme and yet EWS reservation was implemented, but even though it includes people from other communities, the selected candidate list only shows upper caste student names. Ideological change in the government also influences democratic institutional bodies, the Supreme Court is also an elite club of upper castes.” Vicky and his team, went through the prospectus and the new candidate selection lists to find out the alleged disparity, he tells us.

“Does Pondicherry University function outside the legal framework of the Republic of India? Is the Registrar, along with the University Administration and faculty, systematically subverting the basic principles of social justice and democracy enshrined in our Constitution? Why is the VC a mere spectator in this large-scale systematic discrimination happening under his supervision,” the students ask. ASA reiterated these fundamental questions to the administration and the Students’ Council who seem to be unaware to address the issue. We demand that the University administration correct its wrong urgently,” the statement read.

We have reached out to the University for a comment and will update this copy when we received it.