SC to soon hear a petition that seeks implementation of reservations in IITs, removal of under-performing faculty  

The Supreme Court of India will probably hear a petition today that seeks the implementation of the government-mandated reservation in faculty recruitment and PhD admission in all 23 Indian Institutes of Technology. The petition was filed by Sachchida Nand Pandey, a postdoctoral fellow at IIT Bombay and an alumnus of IIT Madras.

The petition also seeks to create a mechanism for resolving the research harassment complaints, to constitute a committee of technical experts to review the performance of existing faculty and to cancel the appointment of non-performing faculty "due to violation of reservation norms, formation of transparent recruitment policy." "Over the years, there have been a number of news articles stating these issues. This is what prompted Pandey to move ahead with the petition," says Advocate Manish Kumar, who is appearing for Pandey. The petition says that six IITs in the country do not have even a single faculty from an ST community.

"The process of taking admissions in the Research Program and appointment of faculty members by the IITs are completely unconstitutional, illegal and arbitrary. They are not following the guidelines of reservation as per the constitutional mandate [sic]," reads the petition that was filed on February 26. Recently, there has been a lot of hue and cry over IITs and other premier institutes not following the reservation mandates. In fact, a committee that was appointed to investigate the gap by the Ministry of Education had recommended removing reservations while recruiting faculty.

Another issue that the petition stresses upon is the number of under-performing professors. The petition reads, "IITs council on September 27, 2019, has accepted that over 50 per cent professors' performances are below the desired level. This indicates that the majority of professors are not doing teaching/research properly or incapable of doing this."