Experienced SC/ST applicants “are not allowed to be inducted” as faculty members in AIIMS “even at an initial level,” according to a report by a parliamentary standing committee, despite possessing the necessary qualifications and expertise. This is taking place, according to the standing committee report on the welfare of scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs), which was presented in the Lok Sabha. At AIIMS, there are currently 275 assistant professor positions and 92 professor positions open out of a total of 1111 faculty positions.
The report said the Committee, therefore, is of the view that all existing vacant academic seats must be filed within the next three months. “Within three months of the date the Report was presented to both Houses of Parliament, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare shall submit an action plan. The statement said, “The Committee also have a firm opinion that no faculty seat reserved for SC/ST shall be kept empty for more than six months under any circumstances in the future after filling up all the existing vacant seats.” The statement read, “The Committee observes that fully experienced SCs/STs applicants are not allowed to be accepted as faculty members even at an introductory stage, in spite of possessing appropriate eligibility, competence, and training.”
The Committee further stated that it is “not inclined” to accept the government’s standard response that “no adequate number of eligible candidates could be discovered,” which is routinely overused. “In actuality, this is not a true representation of the evaluation of the SC/ST candidates, who are equally intelligent and deserving. But due to an incorrect, biassed assessment by the Selection Committee, they were purposefully labelled as “not fit” in order to deny SC-ST candidates their legal right to join the university, the committee claimed.
The panel further stated that there are currently no SC and ST members in the General Body of the AIIMS, depriving SCs and STs of their legitimate rights to participate in policy decisions and to safeguard SCs and STs’ interests in service-related concerns. The statement said that the Committee had “legitimate expectations that there must be an SC-ST member in the General Body of AIIMS to provide representation to the SC-ST community and to protect their interests in service matters as well as to be part of the decision-making process of the policy being framed by the AIIMS authority and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.” The panel stated that members of the SC-ST community are not permitted to enrol in the super-speciality courses because the reservation is not extended or applied there. According to the report, this leads to an unprecedented and unjustified deprivation of SC and ST applicants as well as a monopoly of non-reserved faculty members in super-speciality disciplines.
“For the purpose, the Committee are of the firm view that effective mechanism is set up to send SC and ST doctors and students to undergo specialised training abroad so that their adequate representation may be seen visibly in all super-speciality fields,” the panel said.
The committee also remarked that the overall percentage of SC and ST students admitted to MBBS, other undergraduate programmes, and post-graduate programmes at various AIIMS is much lower than the necessary level of 15% for SC and 7.5% for ST. “Regarding the filling of undergraduate and graduate seats in various AIIMS under the SC and ST category, this paints a pretty bleak picture. As a result, the Committee strongly urges AIIMS to adhere to the required proportion of SC/ST quota in all courses “It read.
The Committee reiterated the necessity of maintaining the percentage of reservations in order to provide SCs and STs with more chances. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare was asked to take “sincere steps to diligently fill up all vacant seats,” according to the statement, “so that eligible applicants from SC/ST are not deprived of their rightful seats.”
