PIL challenges ordinance against subject-wise quota in teachers’ appointment

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 8

A day after the Centre promulgated an ordinance overturning the Supreme Court’s verdict favouring subject-wise reservation for SC, ST and OBC in selection of university and college teachers, a PIL on Friday challenged it before the Supreme Court, terming it arbitrary and violative of right to equality.

The President had on March 7 promulgated the Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Teachers) Ordinance 2019 which says a college would be treated as one unit for reservation as against subject or department-wise reservation ruled by the Allahabad High Court and upheld by the Supreme Court.

“Clubbing seats across departments and considering College/Institution as one unit “violates Article 14 (equality before the law) and Article 16 (equality of opportunity in matters of public employment) of the Constitution,” submitted petitioners Prathvi Raj Chauhan and Priya Sharma.

As teachers in different departments were neither transferable nor in competition with each other, it could result in some departments having all the teachers from reserved categories and some other departments having only unreserved candidates, they contended demanding a stay on the provision of the ordinance.

The Supreme Court had last month refused to review its verdict which ruled that individual departments and not universities or colleges will be considered as the unit for implementing reservation for SC, ST and OBC in appointment of teachers.

A Bench headed by Justice UU Lalit had rejected the review petitions filed by the Centre, UGC and certain individual petitioners seeking review of its earlier verdict upholding an Allahabad High Court order on the contentious issue.

“We have gone through the review petitions and do not find any error apparent on record to justify interference in review jurisdiction. These review petitions are, therefore, dismissed,” the Bench had said.

The Centre and UGC had contended that process of selection of faculty members from SC/ST or OBC would get delayed due to difficulties in ensuring 15 per cent, 7.5 per cent and 27 per cent quota, respectively.

Earlier, universities adopted a system under which every fourth teacher was appointed from the OBC category, seventh from the SC category and 14^th from the ST category.

The Bench made it clear that the appeals of the Centre and the UGC were dismissed as the findings in the Allahabad HC verdict were found to be correct.

In its January 21 verdict, the Supreme Court had dismissed the appeals of the Centre and UGC against the order of Allahabad High Court which had ruled that quota for SC/ST or OBC in posts of faculty will be calculated department-wise and not college or university-wise.

While deciding a petition challenging the reservation policy for faculties at Banaras Hindu University, the high court had on April 7, 2017, struck down a circular of UGC on filling of posts of teachers for SC/ST or OBC categories.

“The respondent university will carry out the exercise of applying reservation to the posts under advertisement treating the department/subject as a unit for all levels of teachers rather than treating the university as a unit,” the high court had said.