National Commission for Scheduled Castes has decided to hold a hearing in connection with Sri Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology for flouting reservation policy.
The commission has responded to petitioners who have requested that “SCTIMST should follow reservation policies in appointment and promotion for the ‘Group A’ posts”.
The Group ‘A’ category considers applications for Professors, Assistant Professors, Associate Professors, Scientists and Engineers.
The petitioners submitted their grievances alleging that the autonomous medical school “is not following reservation policy in respect of recruitment and promotion meant for SCs.”
The matter has been taken up with the director of SCTIMST.
The commission is not satisfied by the reply furnished by the department, and therefore has called for a hearing on October 17 in Trivandrum.
SCTIMST, which falls under the Department of Science and Technology, receives a grant-in-aid from the government of India. Hence, it is also bound to implement the rule of reservation in all categories involving appointment and promotions as mandated by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1974.
“The Ministry of Science and Technology has clarified that no such order has been given to SCTIMST under the department of Science and technology for relaxation/exception from implementing reservation policy of government of India for recruitment to Group A posts, including scientific and technical posts such as academic staff engineers, scientists,”the Commission found.
The summon notice says that the flouting of reservation norms is in violation of Constitutional provisions, especially the service safeguards provided to SC employees.
There is no mention about the implementation of reservation policy in respect of recruitment or promotion of their employees in the SCTI Act 1980 – its rules and regulations.
The notice underlined the point that “the amendment in this regard is urgently necessitated to ensure strict compliance of reservation policies and DoPT orders. It is to be noted that other bodies like AIIMS and ICAR incorporated norms of reservation policy and it is strictly being implemented.”
Section 25 of SCTMIST Act clearly states that the institute shall carry out such directions from time to time by the central government for its efficient administration. But the guidelines of government of India pertaining to implementation of reservation policy is not seen as carried out by the institute which violative of service safeguard provided to SCs, said the Commission notice.
“It has been observed that despite the matter of implementation of reservation policy being sub-judice the institute has carried out appointments in various cadres also not considering the candidature of not even a single SC candidate and rejecting their applications on flimsy ground,” NCSC mentioned.
“The New Reservation Policy passed in the governing council meeting of 2018 March without mentioning the court case of 2015. In some places they use the word sub judice where it suits them,” it added.
NCSC has said that necessary action needs to be taken since the autonomous body has not complied with the special recruitment drive for filling up backlog vacancies of SCs, STs and OBCs as per the government of India direction.
And that, “SCTIMST is not following reservation policies of the government of India for Group A appointments.”
