Being the first to report Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee’s decision to expel 73 students from its roster because their Cumulative Grade Point Average was below 5, Jantakareporter.com has now decided to move ahead with its investigation into this matter.

An IIT Roorkee student has compiled statistics that prove the institution’s new policy of expulsion due to low credits along with expulsion due to CGPA below 5.0 is ‘discriminatory, mathematically unfair and unsustainable’. Although parents of all students are made to sign a declaration at the beginning of the year stating poor performance of their kid could result in their expulsion, the incident in IIT Roorkee is quite surprising.

The student, in his statistical report, has argued that in the current expulsion at Roorkee, out of the 73 students, 31 were from ST category, 23 from SC category, 4 from PD, 8 from OBC & 7 from general category (90.4% students are from reserved category).

He argued that if the same rule continues in the following years, 42% of the students expelled in the following year might still be from ST category, 31.5% would be from the SC category & remaining from the other categories.

Total Expelled Students 73 ST 31 SC 23 PD 4 OBC 8 General 7

The total input of IIT Roorkee is 992 for a year for B.Tech students and out of these 75 students are STs (as per 7.5 percent quota of central govt). The student argues that considering 31 of the students expelled recently out of 73 are STs, most of the ST and SC students will be expelled by the end of third year. The expulsion process is scheduled to continue every year as per IIT’s new policy.

However, a probable reason for this inequality comes from the reservation policy in the admission process itself.

“The final cut-off marks for JEE Admission in IIT Roorkee 2014 were 160 for General Category, 87 for SC category, 68 for ST category. In such a case how can you expect such students to score 5.0 (Equivalent of 55%). They will be learning in the first year. Why do you take them in and expel at the end of first year?” argues the student.

A similar case had happened in IIT Kharagpur when 20 students were expelled for poor performance in their undergraduate exams. However, all these students were then taken back except in one instance each in IIT Kharagpur and IIT Kanpur.

Although the students of IIT Roorkee had filed a mercy appeal following them being warned of poor performance in their second semester exams, the HRD ministry remained silent since it considers all IITs to be autonomous.

“An executive meeting of the Senate of IIT Roorkee was called on Friday evening at 4 PM. I don’t know what they have decided. The Director(Chairman of the Senate) at any point can call an extra-ordinary meeting of the senate to discuss any issue. The senate will nod its head for whatever the Director & Dean (Academics) says.”

We are not revealing the student’s name for the fear of reprisal from the IIT-R authorities. You too submit your contributions in text or video to ireport@jantakareporter.com