IIT Madras, Bombay violate reservation policy again; APPSC demands IITs be held accountable

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) and IIT Bombay have once again violated the reservation policy in faculty recruitment and PhD admission last year, the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) shared the latest RTI data. The study circle demanded officials to hold IITs responsible for violating constitutional provisions.

The APPSC students group have been voicing against the reservation violation at IITs for some years now. Earlier this year, the group shared the RTI data on IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur, and IIT Kanpur faculty recruitment and found that the seats reserved for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) and female candidates were denied despite having a good number of representations.

Tagging the ministry of education, the APPSC said: “The data from 10 depts (of IIT Madras) shows that only 4 have any ST students. There is a need to hold these institutions accountable for violating constitutional provisions.”

“IIT Bombay is violating reservation norms despite the MMR announcement. No ST and OBC faculty were recruited in 2023. Why hasn't the government taken action against this blatant violation of reservation which is happening for years,” it said in another post.

“The lack of diversity in faculty has resulted in denial of seats to SC ST OBC students. Despite having a sufficient number of applicants from every category, IIT Bombay keeps violating reservation norms in PhD admissions,” it added.

IIT Madras

The latest RTI data showed that six out of 10 departments at IIT Madras did not have a single ST student. Last year, only 2% of students offered admission into PhD programmes belonged to the ST category and 10% belonged to SC category.

IIT Bombay fails to implement MMR

The data showed that IIT Bombay has not recruited any ST or OBC category candidates last year and failed to implement the Mission Mode Recruitment (MMR). As per the current faculty composition, SC, ST, OBC faculty members constitute only 6% of the total.

It also revealed that 16 departments did not admit a single ST student in PhD programmes, 7 did not admit any SC student, and 2 departments did not admit OBC students. Out of the total 85 students, 33 SC, 24 ST, and 28 OBC students were denied seats. Here’s the number of ST students applied for PhD admission at IIT Bombay.