New UGC Rules: After Fall In Reserved Seats For University Faculty, HRD Ministry Mulls Ordinance To Restore Old System

The HRD (Human Resource Development) Ministry is exploring options to bring in an ordinance to restore the old reservation quota for appointment to faculty posts in universities, as reported by Business Standard. The UGC (University Grants Commission) had earlier in the year, changed the quota rules for faculty positions in universities across India.

Instead of calculating the number of reserved positions by the total number of available seats in a university, the UGC decided in favour of quota being based on the total strength of individual departments like English. However, some groups representing the SCs and STs alleged that this new formula would practically reduce the number of reserved seats.

So to restore the old system, HRD has been mulling to bring in an ordinance. But when the proposal was sent to the Law Ministry for scrutiny, it wanted to scrap the old system of reservation in universities entirely and bring in a new one. In the previous scheme, reservation for faculty posts was reserved for SCs and STs at three levels of professorship but only at the entry level of teachers belonging to OBCs. In its new proposal, the Law Ministry wanted to bring the OBC reservation on par with that of the SCs and STs.

Though the HRD Ministry was opposed to this overhauling of the entire system, The Economic Times (ET) has reported that the Law Ministry has reiterated its support for providing 27 per cent quota to OBCs “across all direct-entry faculty positions in universities.”

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