The Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day within six minutes of convening post lunch break following loud protests from the SP, the BSP and the RJD on severely cutting down the faculty positions for SC/ST and OBC candidates following implementation of the 13-point roster system in universities. In total, the House worked for just 11 minutes.
As soon as the upper House reassembled at 2 pm, the Opposition members raised slogans calling the BJP anti-Dalit and anti-reservation party.
The protests are following the recent Allahabad High Court judgment, which replaced departments instead of University as a whole as the basic unit for reservation. The government had filed a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court against the High Court’s judgment. However, the apex court upheld the Allahabad High Court order.
The Samajwadi Party alleged that the government made a half-hearted effort to appeal against the Allahabad order. “The government had assured that no new faculty will be hired till the old system is restored. Instead, in last few weeks eleven Universities have advertised vacancies out of which only 10.5 per cent are for the reserved categories,” SP MP Javed Ali Khan said. The reservation should have been fifty per cent.
Union Minister for Human Resources and Development Prakash Javedkar reiterated that the government is committed towards restoring the old mechanism of reservation and informed the House that a review petition will be filed soon.
