More than half of the faculty positions reserved for OBCs in central institutions of higher education are vacant, while about 40% of those reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribes also remain unfilled, Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank told the Lok Sabha in a written response to a question from three Congress MPs on Monday.

The situation is particularly acute in the elite Indian Institutes of Management, where more than 60% of SC and OBC reserved positions are vacant, while almost 80% of positions reserved for STs have not been filled. This means that out of 24 positions reserved for STs, only five have been filled. For the Indian Institutes of Technology, data has only been provided for non-faculty positions. Both IITs and IIMs have been lobbying for exemption from such faculty quota requirements.

Mr. Nishank’s response to another question from Congress MP N. Uttam Kumar Reddy showed that within the Central Universities, vacancies are higher at the level of professors. Out of 709 assistant professor positions reserved for STs at the 42 universities, more than 500 have been filled. However, when it comes to professors, only nine positions have been filled out of the 137 reserved for ST candidates. This means 93% of these posts remain unfilled. Less than one percent of the 1,062 professors in central universities are from ST communities.

Similarly, 64% of the 2,206 assistant professor positions reserved for OBCs have been filled at the Central Universities. However, less than 5% of the 378 professor positions reserved for OBCs have been filled.

Despite the high levels of vacancies, Mr. Nishank’s written response to the first question claimed that, “Now, after implementation of “The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019”, the OBC reservation has been implemented at all levels.”

In the second response, he noted that the Ministry of Education and University Grants Commission (UGC) continuously monitor vacancies but put the final blame on universities themselves. “However, the onus of filling up the teaching posts lies on Central Universities which are autonomous bodies created under Acts of Parliament,” he said.

In fact, in June 2019, UGC had written to all Universities, giving them a six-month deadline to fill up their vacancies, and warning that grants would be withheld if its directions were violated. According to the data presented in the Lok Sabha on Monday, there are now 6,074 vacant positions at the 42 universities, of which 75% are in reserved categories.