New Delhi: The Union Cabinet on Thursday cleared an ordinance to junk a controversial quota formula for faculty recruitment at universities following a series of protests over the issue by various students’ and teachers’ organisations.
“The Union #Cabinet today approved the proposal for promulgation of “The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Ordinance, 2019” considering the University/ College as one unit,” HRD minister Prakash Javadekar tweeted. The ordinance aims take faculty recruitment back to an older formula by which the quotas for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) were calculated on the basis of an institution’s staff strength, and not an individual department’s.
“This decision restores earlier reservation system based on 200 point roster. No longer will ‘Department/Subject’ be treated as one unit,” he added. “This decision will also address the long standing demands of persons belonging to SCs/STs/SEBCs and ensure their rights envisaged under the Constitution. This decision will also now pave the way for filling up of more than 5000 vacancies by direct recruitment in Teachers’ Cadre,” Javadekar added.
“The Union cabinet has also approved setting up of 50 new #KendriyaVidyalaya under Civil/Defence sector in different states of the country. This is the great decision . Nearly 1 lakh student will be benefited.
This will also create more employment opportunity,” he also tweeted.
Various students’ and teachers’ organisations had been urging the government to bring an ordinance to restore the 200-point roster taking college or university as a unit for reservation in teaching posts.
The University Grants Commission had announced in March last year that an individual department should be considered as the base unit to calculate the number of teaching posts to be reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes candidates, following an order by the Allahabad HighCourt in April 2017.
The Supreme Court had last month dismissed a review petition filed by the HRD Ministry after its special leave petition against the court order wasrejected by the apex court. Javadekar had said in the Lok Sabha on February11 that the government can “bring an ordinance if its review petition filed inthe top court is rejected”.
