The vacancy situation was exacerbated by legal battles over how to implement reservations in faculty hiring. In a controversial ruling in April 2017, the Allahabad High Court struck down the existing system which mandated that the unit for determining reservations was the university as a whole, not separate departments. Accordingly, in March 2018, the University Grants Commission (UGC) directed educational institutions to start treating each department as a separate unit in their recruitment process. In many smaller departments, this translated to few or no faculty reservations and led to outrage, especially among Dalit and Adivasi communities. After the Supreme Court dismissed the Centre’s appeal against the High Court order, the government issued an ordinance in March 2019 to revert to the older system.
While the court battles raged, hiring came to a virtual halt in most institutions leading to an increase in vacancies. Apart from the 40 Central universities, there are another 5,000-odd faculty vacancies in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and National Institutes of Technology (NIT), according to senior officials.
“We are taking immediate steps to ensure that all vacancies are notified and advertised, to begin with,” said Mr. Subrahmanyam. “This is a definite priority.”
Other items on the 100-day action plan include the long-delayed National Education Policy, which the Ministry hopes to release by May 31, and an ambitious ₹1.5 lakh crore five-year implementation plan, as earlier reported by The Hindu.
Expansion of IoEs
Another focus area is the proposed expansion of the Institutes of Eminence (IoE) project. The scheme was initially meant to bestow the tag on 20 potentially world-class institutions, which would be given higher autonomy and freedom to decide fees, course durations and structures. Ten public institutions would also be given a ₹1,000 crore grant, while the ten chosen private institutions would not receive financial assistance.
The empowered expert committee headed by former chief election commissioner N. Gopalaswami had initially recommended 11 institutions for the scheme in July 2018 and the Centre had finally bestowed the tag on six institutions. Of them, three are public institutions — IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru. And three of them are private institutions — Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Manipal University, and the yet-to-open Jio University. In December, when the committee recommended 19 more names, taking the total list to 30, the UGC asked the HRD Ministry if the scheme could be expanded.
“We will take the proposal to Cabinet,” said Mr. Subrahmanyam. “The additional financial implication would be around ₹7,000 crore.”
