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New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has decided to address the contentious issue of caste-based reservation in faculty hiring at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

The premier institutions, along with the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), had not been adhering to the Constitutionally-mandated reservation norms in their entirety when hiring faculty.

Early this week, however, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) issued a directive to all central government technical institutions such as the IITs, IIMs and the IISERs to implement reservation in teaching positions, including senior posts.

According to provisions in the Constitution, all government institutions are mandated to provide 15 per cent reservation for scheduled castes, 7.5 per cent for scheduled tribes and 27 per cent for other backward castes (OBCs).

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Institutes bypassed quota through old DoPT order

The IITs and IIMs had not been implementing reservation in its entirety.

The IITs for instance provide reservation for Dalits, tribals and OBCs in faculty hiring only at the entry level — assistant professors.

With the new directive, the institutions will now have to ensure reservations in senior faculty positions as well — professors and associate professors. The same rule will apply to IISERs, the central government institutes dedicated purely to research.

The IIMs, on the other hand, had not been adhering to caste-based reservation in appointing faculty, citing an over 40-year-old order from the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which said faculty reservation will not be extended to technical posts.

IISERs, which are purely research-based institutes, also cite the same order to deny reservation. According to the DoPT order that came before 1975, all “scientific and technical” posts are exempt from caste-based reservation.

The HRD ministry has, however, now asked all IIMs to consider the latest directive while appointing faculty. The new directive “supersedes” all older orders and directives, it has said.

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Diversity deficit in IIMs, IITs

There is a huge diversity deficit in the faculty of IITs and IIMs.

According to data submitted by the HRD Ministry in Parliament in December 2018, SCs, STs and OBCs together made up just 9 per cent of total faculty in IITs and 6 per cent in IIMs.

For IITs, most of the Dalit, tribal and OBC faculty are at the entry level, which is where the institutes provided reservation.

At IIMs, where there is no reservation as of now, 90 per cent of the faculty are from the general category. Of the 18 IIMs that shared data with the government (barring IIM Ahmedabad and Indore), 16 did not have a single ST faculty member and 12 did not have any representation from the SC category. Seven of the IIMs had no OBC faculty. The SC, ST faculty are just 1.5 per cent of the total faculty pool.

Faculty reservation in IIMs has been a contentious issue. The central government has in the past ordered IIMs to ensure caste-based reservation but this is the first time that it has issued such a clear directive asking the institutions to follow it.

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