The Hindu : National : Anti-quota stir: Venugopal played `provocative' role

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Sunday, May 06, 2007
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Anti-quota stir: Venugopal played `provocative' role

Aarti Dhar

Thorat panel submits report to Anbumani

NEW DELHI: The three-member Thorat Committee, constituted by the Centre in September last year to look into the allegations of discrimination of the reserved category students at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), has charged its Director P. Venugopal with "playing a provocative role" in the origination of the agitation against 27 per cent reservation to the Other Backward Classes in elite central education institutes.

The committee, chaired by the University Grants Commission (UGC) chairperson S.K. Thorat that submitted its report to the Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss here on Saturday, also suggests that the anti-quota agitation was "planned" by a group of people who had strong views against the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Act, 2006 (then Bill). The members in their report claim they have enough evidence to support their findings.

According to the report, AIIMS became the venue for the so-called anti-quota agitation primarily to paralyse health care to thousands of people and to attract public attention against reservation. Paralysis of emergency services also would put pressure on the Government to withdraw the [then] proposed Bill, it says. Further, the committee says that the administration went to the extent of penalising and punishing the students and staff who did not support the agitation while questioning the credibility and the role of the Youth for Equality - a student body that spearheaded the agitation.

The voluminous report says that AIIMS administration had failed to ensure safeguards for the weaker sections of society guaranteed under the Constitution like undergraduate programmes and special coaching for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes students. The report also says that the conduct of the individual faculty towards the SC/ST students are not fair and objective and the teachers often "misused" their powers given to them for internal assessment. As many as 69 per cent of the reserved category students alleged that they did not receive adequate support from teachers, 72 per cent said they faced discrimination and 76 per cent said their evaluation was not proper while 82 per cent said they often got less than expected marks.

In practical exams and viva voce, these students said the treatment towards them was "not fair."

Worse, 76 per cent said higher caste faculty members enquired about the castes of their students while 84 per cent said they were asked, directly or indirectly, about their caste backgrounds and an equal percentage of students alleged their grading was adversely affected due to their background. The reserved category students also alleged "social isolation" at various levels including even from the faculty members with 84 per cent students saying they faced violence and segregation in the hostel that often forced them to shift to hostel number 4 and 5 where there was a concentration of the SC/ST students.

The committee has recommended that a committee of students, residents and faculty should be set up to examine and study social division in the campus and suggest measures to remedy the situation. The two other members of the Committee are K.M. Shyam Prasad, Vice-President of the National Board of Examination and R.K. Srivastava, Director General of Health Services.

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