There are approximately 86 percent of faculty positions reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) which remain unoccupied at the Indian Institute of Management-Tiruchi (IIM-T). This data was sourced from records obtained by the All India Other Backward Class Students’ Association (AIOBCSA) under the Right to Information Act(RTI).AIOBCSA.
Scheduled Tribes (ST) and OBCs also have suffered with regard to the employment rate the association said.
Information obtained through an RTI application made by the students’ body has revealed that there are 83 percent vacancies on OBC appointments, 86.66 percent on SC and 100 percent on ST appointments.
At IIM-T, the sanctioned strength of staff as on August 2024 covering SC, ST, OBC and General Economically Weaker Section (EWS) was 94.
“We don’t understand why these posts are not being filled. Why are these rosters not available in the public domain by these institutions? Why do we have to use the RTI Act to obtain such data?” asked G. Kiran Kumar, National President of AIOBCSA.
He mentioned that the association with 1000 members in Central universities had started ensuring equality in academic appointments from the year 2019.
Using the RTI Act, we had discovered that in the year 2019, there were only nine OBC appointments in 45 Central universities. This pushed us to provoke this activism to see the diversity and inclusion policies in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and IIMs”. They said this to the Hindu.
Recruitment details from IIMs Delhi and IIM Bhubaneswar shows the same trend Mr. Kumar added.
“Where are such candidates actually working after we have produced so many PhD scholars from eminent institutions. For IIM-T, information with regard to assistant professor, associate professor, and professor posts has not given any related postings. The rosters are silent on the cadre and individual level,” he alleged.
The association brought up the question of the insufficient diversity of academic job placement opportunities with Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in the years 2022 and 2023. “The letter was sent by the minister to the institutions for immediately filling up these posts calling it a special recruitment drive of all backlog positions especially the faculty. But the processes have only about 50 percent of the faculty positions filled so far,” Mr. Kumar said.
“Reservation in employment for Social Justice is ever ordered by the law of the constitution. How many days can people pronounce thereby say that, they cannot get the required number of staff? Some type of improvement is expected at least,” he added.
Replying to this query, officials of IIM-T told The Hindu the answer sought was already provided as a response to AIOBCSA’s RTI Act query and no further comments would be entertained on the matter.
