Clearing the air regarding the debate over Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) providing reservation in hiring faculty members, the Human Resource Development Ministry on Thursday clarified that "all institutions including IIMs will have to provide reservation as per the Constitution."

The ministry had earlier this year asked IIMs if the schools followed Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes (SC/ ST/OBC) quota policy in faculty hiring. To this, some of the institutes had responded saying that they only stressed on merit while hiring faculty members. This triggered a nationwide debate in the academic circle over the government’s reservation policy and its implementation.

The Ministry has, however, now put an end to the debate saying that all the institutes including IIMs will have to follow the reservation policy and anything otherwise is beyond question.

Reservation for faculty hiring in IIMs has had a controversial history after 2008 when the HRD Minister then, Arjun Singh, directed all centrally funded institutes, including IITs and IIMs, to give quota in faculty hiring. This faced opposition from the institutions who were of the view that quota will impact the quality of teaching.

While IITs followed the government orders, IIMs were defiant. Faced with protests, a bill exempting 47 educational institutes from reservation including IITs and IIMs was proposed by Singh. It passed in Rajya Sabha in 2008 but lapsed after the 14th Lok Sabha was dissolved.

Meanwhile, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, who has been visiting various education institutes across the country to take a stock of the situation, announced his meeting with the education ministers and secretaries of BRICS countries on September 30 to discuss the possibilities of involving students from the BRICS nations in India. With this, he said that the government plans to give a push to getting more foreign students in the country.

"We are going to discuss the opportunities of educational cooperation between the five nations. We also want to encourage entry of foreign students in India," Mr. Javadekar told reporters here on Thursday.

He also discussed the upcoming meeting of VCs of all Central Universities which is going to be held on October 6 in Banaras Hindu University. "The government's idea is to analyse the functioning and needs of various education institutes across the country. And as a part of the analysis, I have already met the IIT Council, IIIT Council and the IIM Council."

"I am further going to meet with the VCs of all Central Universities to take a stock of the situation in the institutes. The agenda of discussion will be quality of institutes, internal resource generation, student-centric initiatives like CBCS among other things," he added.