OBC students body urges Dharmendra Pradhan to relax eligibility criteria for reserved posts in HEIs

NEW DELHI: The All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA) has written to union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan urging him to provide relaxation in minimum eligibility criteria for reserved posts in higher education institutions (HEIs).

The students’ association thanked Pradhan for his continuous follow-up of the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), Economically Weaker Section (EWS), and Persons with Disabilities (PWD) backlog recruitment drive in the (HEIs).

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The special recruitment drive will fill more than 13,000 faculty positions in Central Universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), Indian Institutes of Science (IISc), and other HEIs and help make educational institutions more inclusive.

AIOBCSA has mentioned certain issues related to the special recruitment drive

• There is a need for providing relaxation in minimum eligibility conditions for OBC, SC, ST, EWS, and PWD candidates for the recruitment of Professor and Associate Professor cadre in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), especially in the number of publications in UGC listed journals.
• Despite proper directions from the UGC, many Universities neither maintain rosters nor display rosters in the public domain. All HEIs must display the rosters on websites according to DoPT guidelines. The Ministry shall also audit the University rosters regularly.
• The Central Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs) must follow a fixed roster system instead of a flexible one.
• The rosters of HEIs shall reflect 15% SC, 7.5% ST, 27% OBC, and 10% EWS reservations to the total allocated cadre strength. Currently, many HEIs have not even filled constitutionally stipulated reserved positions.
• The Ministry shall bring a policy to ban the No Suitable Candidate Found or None Found Suitable (NFS) options if there are applications for the reserved posts.