Shashi Bhushan
The Rajendra Agricultural University located in Bihar’s Pusa is known for its excellence in education. It was established in the year 1970 and later granted the status of a central university in the year 2016. The university is now known as Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University(DRPCAU). But, I will not talk here regarding the history or greatness of the university. Instead, I am writing this to expose the corruption and caste based hatred which is thriving in the university.
The university issued a notification dated 17th March 2018 whereby it invited interested candidates to apply for faculty positions. In all, a total of 68 vacancies were open for the assistant professor post. Out of which 35 seats were unreserved, 11 seats were earmarked for OBC (including backlog), 5 seats were for Scheduled Caste and 16 seats for candidates belonging to Scheduled Tribe group.
The central university rules on reservation demand such seats be kept reserved for the socially marginalized sections of society. To remind, the quota fixed are: 15% for Scheduled Caste, 7.5% for Scheduled Tribe and 27% for OBC’s. Here one can clearly see that the university has not followed the constitutional norms. For instance, in the case of Scheduled Caste seats, the university reserved only 5 seats (including the backlogs) in place of 10 seats. Hence, the university in question did not follow reservation roaster in the recruitment process and violated Article 14 of the Indian constitution.
Secondly, the MHRD had earlier decided to consider the department as a unit for faculty recruitment rather than the university but this decision has already been challenged and the matter is still in the Supreme Court. On the basis of Supreme Court’s order, UGC directed all state and central universities of the Union of India to postpone their recruitment process till further dates by order letter No.1-5/2006(SCT) dated July 19th, 2018.
Despite this, the university considered the department as the unit for reservation and not the university as a whole and DRPCAU sent call letters to candidates to appear for the selection process. Even in the exam, there was no transparency. There was no proper seating arrangement, nor any coding or serial number on papers and also the papers were not sealed properly. The entire process was highly compromised. Hence some serious questions emerge. Why did the university flout the rule of considering the university as a whole for implementing the reservation policy? Why did it consider the department as a unit? What was the motive behind this?
According to terms and conditions, both academic score and written exam marks should be considered for the interview selection. But within one week, the university published the written exam results without mentioning the marks of any candidates and conducted the interviews. University conducted the interview just after 14 hours of publication of written test results. Why was the university in such a haste? This is the third question.
The next week the university sent mails only to the selected candidates and asked them to join the post. But it didn’t publish the final selection list in the public domain either on the notice board or the website. The overall recruitment process is doubtful and indicates a non-transparent system. Hence undeserving candidates might have been recruited through this process. An investigation is required to identify the truth behind above-mentioned facts and punish the culprits behind this scam.
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Shashi Bhushan is a Research Scholar at IIT Madras.
