UGC Draft Guidelines: 'No reserved post to be de-reserved,' says education ministry

NEW DELHI: Responding to the outcry over the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) draft guidelines on implementing reservation in higher education, the ministry of education (MOE) said on Sunday, “Reservation in Central Educational Institutions (CEI) is provided for all posts in direct recruitment in teacher’s cadre as per the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019. After enactment of this Act, no reserved post is to be de-reserved. Ministry of Education has given directives to all the CEIs to fill up the vacancies strictly as per the 2019 ACT.” The ministry had made the draft guidelines public for comment in December.

The new UGC draft guidelines on implementing reservation in higher education include provisions for "de-reserving" reserved seats that remain vacant. This led to massive public outcry with many academics pointing out that it would undermine the reservation policy altogether. Reservation of seats and posts for historically marginalised communities is a constitutional guarantee.

‘Casteist ploy’: Protest against UGC guidelines

Many students’ and teachers’ organisations have issued statements opposing the move. The All India Students' Association (AISA) and Students’ Federation of India (SFI) have called for a protest on January 29. The AISA described the move as a “casteist ploy”.

"The draft is an attempt to legitimise the malafide act of declaring reserved posts as 'Not Found Suitable' (NFS), an anti-reservation act aimed at shirking away from fulfilling the constitutional mandate of reservation. De-reserving these posts is the next step to ensure that the socially and economically underprivileged segments of society are excluded from knowledge production and empowerment through employment," said the Democratic Teachers' Front of Delhi University in a statement.

According to the Student Federation of India (SFI), the de-reservation criteria, such as the inability to find suitable candidates from reserved categories or the need to avoid vacancies in the public interest, do not address the social barriers and disparities that Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) groups face.

The SFI statement says: “The de-reservation policy perpetuates existing inequalities by not addressing the root causes of underrepresentation and marginalisation. This draft undermines the fundamental principles of affirmative action and social justice enshrined in our constitution."

The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) press release read, “As VC JNU, I want to reiterate to all stakeholders that no posts in JNU have been de-reserved. We have got very good candidates under the reserved category. In the 54-year-old history of JNU the highest number of reserved category faculty have been recruited during my tenure as VC and we are proud of implementing the constitutional guarantees under the reservation policy as stipulated by MoE, GOI.”