New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi supported the widespread protests against the introduction of the 13-point roster system for faculty recruitment in Indian universities on Wednesday.

Highlighting that the new system may significantly reduce the number of Dalits, Adivasis and OBC groups in faculty positions, he wrote a letter to the Union human resources minister Prakash Javadekar, asking him to restore the old 200-point roster system.

Calling the new system as a “travesty of justice”, the Congress president said, “The adoption of the 13-point roster system has eroded the spirit of reservation guaranteed under the constitution of India.”

On January 31, thousands of protestors had gathered in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the restoration of the 200-point roster. The Allahabad high court in 2016 had ruled that the 13-point roster system should replace the previous system.

However, following protests, the University Grants Commission froze hiring of faculty members last year until the Supreme Court heard the matter. On January 22, the Supreme Court upheld the HC’s order, following which new rounds of protests occurred.

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Many believe that the number of reserved posts for Dalits, Adivasis, and OBC groups will be drastically reduced in the new system. Under the new system, faculty positions are opened up according to the vacancies in a department, not a college or an university.

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Noting this, Gandhi wrote to the minister, “Thousands of SC, ST, OBC candidates aspiring to teach in our colleges/universities will be denied opportunity.”

“You had recently stated in the Parliament that out of the 158 faculty posts advertised by the Central Universities of Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Punjab since March 5, 2018, not even a single post was reserved for SCs/STs under the 13-point roster system. By your own ministry’s admission, 43 posts would have been reserved for SC/STs under the 200 point roster system,” the Congress president wrote to Javadekar.

He urged the HRD minister to “ensure that college/university should be taken as a unit for the purpose of reservation, and not the department”.

He appealed to the minister to pass an ordinance to restore the old system and “suspend all recruitments pending resolution of the matter”. He also pushed for a review petition on the matter that could be could be filed by the Union government at the apex court.