Madurai MP Su. Venkatesan, of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has written to Union Minister of Education Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank to reject the recommendation made by a committee to scrap reservation in faculty recruitment for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
In his letter, he demanded that the Ministry bring out a White Paper on the implementation of the reservation policies at the IITs.
It was Mr. Venkatesan’s question earlier this year to the Ministry that brought to light that such a committee had been constituted.
He recently demanded information in Parliament on the action taken by the committee, but its recommendation was brought out by an activist through the Right to Information Act.
Arguing that the committee that was formed to suggest measures for effective implementation of reservation policies at the IITs had done something “diametrically opposite” to its mandate, Mr. Venkatesan said the recommendation was “retrograde” and went against the principles of social justice.
‘Manu dharma mindset’
He said the committee had not understood the principles governing reservation and had echoed the “Manu dharma” mindset by arguing that reservation was a hindrance to “excellence”.
“I humbly suggest that the hindrance is caste and not reservation... In fact, reservation is a remedy, bringing in a large number of people for contributing to the development of society with excellence and output,” the MP said.
Mr. Venkatesan said even the option provided by the committee that reservation be restricted to the cadre of assistant professor and a two-year research assistantship programme to improve enrolment of the reserved categories in the Ph.D. programmes were made with the ulterior motive of diluting reservation in the long run.
He said while data available in the public domain had spotlighted the poor status of implementation of reservation at the institutes, the committee’s claim that reservation policies were being implemented at all levels in student admissions had raised doubts about its intentions.
