Another dismaying fact as revealed by the Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank in a written response to a Lok Sabha question asked by three Congress MPs, more than 60% of the posts reserved for Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Caste faculty members at the Indian Institutes of Management remain vacant, and that number is more than 80% for faculty posts reserved for Scheduled Tribes. More than 50% of faculty positions for OBCs remain vacant in all central higher education institutions on average, and more than 40% of posts for SCs and STs. Less than 1% of the 1,062 professors in central universities are from ST communities.The report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment reveals that just about 28 per cent of the targeted 4 crore students have benefited from the government’s Post Metric Scholarship Scheme for Scheduled Caste students in the last two years. While the unemployment rate in the country has rocketed and is the worst since independence, the indifferent attitude of the ministries and departments concerned in filling the vacant posts, especially the reserved posts to the deserving communities is tantamount to denying the constitutional rights to the citizen, said Faizy.He urged the Union government to initiate immediate measures to fill the vacancies at once, and to ensure that the Post-Metric Scholarship to the SC’s is paid to all the deserving students without further delay.
