NEW DELHI: Even as Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, gets ready to implement the 27% OBC reservation from this year, it finds itself embroiled in another quota mess.
IIT-Delhi director Surendra Prasad was recently summoned by the national commission for scheduled castes after the institute expelled 12 SC students for poor academic performance.
The commission, headed by senior Congress leader Buta Singh, asked IIT to reply within two weeks while pressuring it to review its decision.
The premier engineering institute had expelled 25 students, including 12 belonging to the SC category. Parents of the SC students approached the commission complaining that IIT was resorting to discriminatory methods and their wards had been particularly targeted since IIT-Delhi’s academic standard was declining.
They also alleged that even though IITs had various committees for the welfare of SC/ST students, many did not know of them, student-guides did not help them pick up studies through special coaching and instead, pushed them to extra-curricular activities.
The students said they faced discrimination from faculty members. A student even alleged a professor had told him he wasn’t doing well in studies because he was from the “reserved” category.
IIT-Delhi has strongly denied the allegations. Prasad clarified that the decision to expel the 25 students was taken by the IIT board which, after evaluation, found them in poor grades.
Prasad said some of the students had failed to clear papers even after six years while the duration of the BTech course was four years.
He further clarified SC/ST students received special coaching in physics, chemistry and maths before they joined IITs.
p_vineeta@dnaindia.net
