On a day the Samajwadi Party mobilised parties against the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) reservation in promotions sought by the rival Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a revelation came that even the basic quota of appointments of SCs, STs and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) is blatantly flouted years after years by the central universities and the Indian Institutes of Technology.

E Muralidharan, an alumnus of the IIT Madras, has brought it to the notice of Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari seeking his intervention to end the discrimination, pointing out an inherent bias against the backward communities.

He asserts that the Human Resources Development (HRD) ministry just writes to the flouting institutions to launch a special drive to fill vacancies in reserved categories but it shuts eyes to illegal appointments from the general categories against the reserved seats.

The central universities have just not bothered much to implement the mandatory quota policy of 49.5 percent seats reserved in hiring of the teachers -- 27 percent for OBCs, 15 percent for SCs and 7.5 percent for STs. Out of 8,848 teaching posts in 42 central universities, SC/ST and OBC teachers account for just 1,380 as against some 4000 reserved seats. The total number of reserved seats is around 4,400.

If all the centrally funded higher educational institutions are concerned, the activists claim the vacancy in the reserved category is more than 60 percent. They allege that the vice-chancellors and directors are mostly from upper-caste communities and they resist appointment of candidates from the backward communities.

Even in Tamil Nadu that has strong pro-backward bias, the IIT Madras has just 30 from the OBC, SC and ST communities among some 500 faculty members. IIT Bhubaneswar recruited 52 assistant professors in the last four years, but only three of them are from OBC and one from SC.

While teachers from backward communities can make it through the general category on merit, general category candidates cannot be hired against a vacancy in the reserved category.

Muralidharan had also moved the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) against IIT Madras. The commission wrote to the institute to know how it was implementing the reservation policy. The institute did not come up with any satisfactory response.

A typical excuse given by many universities and IITs is that candidates from OBC, SC and ST communities are not good for teaching posts despite possessing PhD degrees and clearing the National Eligibility Test.