Amid a row over the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) draft guidelines on procedure for de-reservation of vacancies in higher education institutions (HEIs), UGC chairman M Jagadeesh Kumar told The New Indian Express that de-reservation will not find a place in the final guidelines.
“This is only the draft and not the final guidelines. This is a document that puts together various Acts and SC judgments on reservation. The final version will not have de-reservation provisions,” Kumar was quoted as saying by The New Indian Express.
The UGC, in a separate post on X on Sunday, quoting its chairman, said, “This is to clarify that there has been no de-reservation of reserved category positions in Central Educational Institutions (CEI) in the past and there is going to be no such de-reservation. All HEIs must ensure that backlog positions in reserved categories are filled up through concerted efforts.”
“Reservation in Central Educational Institutions (CEI) is provided for all posts in direct recruitment in Teacher’s cadre as per the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019. After enactment of this Act, no reserved post is to be de-reserved. Ministry of Education has given directives to all the CEIs to fill up the vacancies strictly as per the 2019 ACT,” the Ministry of Education said in a post on X on Sunday.
Earlier, the draft guidelines by the University Grants Commission (UGC) proposed that any vacancy reserved for SC, ST and OBC candidates can be “declared unreserved” if enough candidates from these categories are not available.
