Teachers and quotas (The Hindu)
Mains Paper 2 : Health and Education
Prelims level : Not much
Mains level : The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’
Cadre) Bill, 2019
Context
- Legislation to overcome the effects of court verdicts is not always a
good idea. However, sometimes an exception ought to be made in the larger
public interest.
- One such law is the Centre’s Bill to ensure that reservation for
scheduled castes, tribes and other backward classes in appointments to
central educational institutions is preserved.
About the bill
- The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre)
Bill, 2019, passed by the Lok Sabha, replaces an ordinance promulgated in
March.
- Its main object is to restore the system of treating an institution or a
university as a single unit to apply the reservation roster, and thus help
fill 7,000 teaching vacancies.
- It seeks to get around a 2017 judgment of the Allahabad High Court
striking down University Grants Commission regulations that treated the
institution as the unit for determining the roster, and directing that each
department be the relevant unit.
- The reservation should be department-wise, and not institution-wise, the
court ruled.
- The Supreme Court rejected the Centre’s appeal against the order.
- But the narrower basis for applying quotas would mean fewer aspirants
from OBC and SC/ST sections would be recruited as assistant professors.
- In the interest of social justice, it had to restore the system of
having a wider pool of posts in which the quotas of 27% for OBC, 15% for SC
and 7.5% ST could be effectively applied.
Benefits of the bill
- The Bill provides welcome relief for aspirants from the disadvantaged
sections of society.
- It is not that the court was manifestly wrong in applying the roster
based on a smaller unit, that is, a department in a university or
institution.
- The High Court noted that having the whole institution as a unit would
result in some departments having only reservation beneficiaries and others
only those from the open category. But the counterpoint is equally valid.
- Having the department as the unit would mean smaller faculties would not
have any reservation.
- It needs 14 posts to accommodate SC and ST candidates, as their turn
would come only at the seventh and 14th vacancy.
- There may be no vacancies in many departments for many years, with none
from the reserved categories for decades. On the other hand, taking the
institution as the unit would give more opportunities for these sections.
Conclusion
- According to the UGC’s annual report for 2017-18, nearly two-thirds of
assistant professors in Central universities are from the general category.
- Their representation would go up further, as the present Bill also
applies the 10% quota for the economically weak among those outside the
reservation loop.
- Applying the court’s department-wise roster norm would have deepened the
sense of deprivation of the backward classes and SC/ST communities.
