A group of political leaders on Thursday alleged that the appeal filed by IIT-Madras in the Madras High Court for a stay on the CBI enquiry ordered by a single judge was an attempt to keep its irregularities in recruitment under wraps.
The High Court had in July ordered a CBI probe into the correctness of the appointments made in the institute from 1995 to September 26, 2000, following writ petitions by Vasantha Kandasamy, an associate professor at IIT-M, who was not promoted for several years.
At a press conference, here, the leaders alleged that they had received several alerts that IIT- M officials were dodging the enquiry.
They feared that evidence might be sought to be destroyed.
M.H. Jawahirullah of the Manithaneya Makkal Katchi said, “The government spends at least Rs. 30 lakh of public money on every IITian. Many scheduled caste candidates and Muslims with good academic credentials have not been promoted or even considered for promotion, while many others with inferior credentials have been given repeated promotions."
Thol Thirumavalavan, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) president, said there was an urgent need for the court to look into the glaringly irregular appointments of teachers and strike them down.
E. Muralidharan, a biomedical engineer, who has filed many cases against IIT- M directors, said there was evidence of irregularities in at least 40 appointments in recent times, and the institute did not follow the reservation policy while recruiting teachers.
Even a year ago, 65 SC candidates had applied, but only six were called for interviews and none was selected. The ones who were not called were not even informed why they weren’t eligible for the post, he said.
IIT-Madras officials denied the charge that the CBI probe was being sought to be scuttled.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, as the matter was still in court, they said the number of SC candidates applying for teaching jobs was low.
“We have used liberal thresholds, and hence, even the proportion of SC candidates called for interviews is higher than those called from the general category. Over the years, we have also been trying to encourage our research scholars who are from the scheduled castes to take up teaching to increase their strength in the academic fraternity.”
The proportion of applicants selected was quite low, IIT-M officials pointed out.
“The decision is anyway made by the selection committee, which also has experts from the scheduled castes,” they added.
