Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

The Supreme Court on Tuesday confirms the order passed by the Allahabad High Court which stated that reservations for the University’s faculty positions will be calculated department-wise instead of by calculating on the basis of total seats in the university.

The two judges practicing in the Supreme Court U U Lalit and Indira Banerjee did not approve of the order passed by the Allahabad High Court in 2017.

In April 2018, the Ministry of Human Resource Development was observed to be filing a Special Leave Petition (SLP) against the order passed by the University Grants Commission in 2018, notifying that the reservations approved for the faculty posts in the universities or colleges will be calculated department-wise instead of aggregate vacant posts basis.

They argued that the department-wise calculation of reservations will lead to less number of seats reserved for the reserved category and eventually the actual reservation policy will be tarnished.

After the continuous agitation conducted by the MHRD did not convince the govt. to withdraw the order, but notified all universities to put their recruitment on hold till the Supreme Court decided its SLP. During all this process, the HRD Ministry drafted a bill to overturn the order passed by the UGC and delivered it to the Cabinet, whose response is yet to arrive.

The Allahabad High Court argued regarding the same, stating that if the reservation recruitment for faculty posts is calculated on the basis of aggregate vacant posts, it will eventually lead to departments/subjects headed by the reserved category only, leaving no posts for the unreserved category, which will become the cause of violating the Article 14 and 16 of the Constitution, also overturn the Clause 6 (c) and 8 (a) (v) of the guidelines framed by the UGC.

Clause 6 (c) states posts should be grouped together wherever more than one university is functioning under a single Act or where more than one college functions under one university, to avoid artificial reduction of cadre strength in order to avoid reservation.

Clause 8 (a) (v) states implementation of the roster system as per directions of the Supreme Court in the 1995 case R K Sabharwal and Others vs State of Punjab and Others. A five-judge Constitution Bench had ruled that reservation prescribed shall be given effect in government services in accordance with a roster to be maintained in each department. The roster, it said, would be implemented in the form of a running account from year to year.

Arguing against that Solicitor General Tushar Mehta supporting MHRD, said that the State was under a duty pursuant to Article 16(4) of the Constitution to make special provisions for reservation in appointments or posts in favor of members of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe if they were not adequately represented in the services under the State.

The Argument continued, and the govt. also states that implementing the reservation recruitments for faculty posts department-wise will lead to a situation where several departments of a university would have a single post in a given department, which will overturn the reservation law.

Supporting the Supreme Court upholding the Allahabad Court Order advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan pointed out that the Supreme Court, in a January 2017 decision in the Sanjiv Kumar vs State of UP and Others, upheld the validity of another April 2009 decision of the Allahabad High Court — in Dr Viswsajeet Singh and Others vs State of UP and Others — which also said that “the rules of reservation and roster shall be applied college-wise and subjectwise when there are plurality of post”.

The UGC advised the Banaras Hindu University in February 2008 to recruit reserved category candidates in accordance with the university seats instead of on the basis of departments allocated. Consequently, the university issued advertisement in July 2016 for filling up the vacancies of various teaching and equivalent posts. This was challenged in the High Court which directed universities to make a fresh roster, taking department/subject as a unit and not the university.

Experts notified against the order that reservation based on a department meant that the posts for a single candidate such as of a Professor will have very less probability for a reserved category student to secure the post. This will lead to a reduced number of SC, ST and OBC teachers in higher education.

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