Mission Mode Recruitment Drive Falls Wide Off: No ST Faculty Across 14 of IIT Kanpur’s 19 Departments

Kanpur: The much-touted Mission Mode recruitment drive for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Community (OBC) communities appears to have fallen wide off the mark if the figures released by the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is something to go by.

In response to queries filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by a student outfit, Ambedkar Phule Periyar Student Study Circle (APSSC), the IIT Kanpur has revealed that there is no ST faculty across its 14 of the 19 departments.

Furthermore, it reveals, there are as many as eight departments without any SC faculty and three departments without any OBC faculty. 

The skewed equations can be gauged from the fact that in the Mechanical Engineering department, as per the RTI reply, there are 39 faculties from the general category but none from the SC/ST and only two from the OBC community. 

Maximum representation of the SC category candidates is in the Department of Electrical Engineering, where there are 4 faculties from the community against 44 candidates from the general category students. Not a single department has two candidates from the ST category.

Mission Mode Recruitment Fails to Move the Needle? 

The RTI reply reveals that even the mission mode recruitment exercise of the IIT Kanpur failed to fill the backlog in recruitment of faculties from SC/ST/OBC  categories . 

In 2023, only nine candidates from SC/ST/OBC categories were selected across the institution’s nine departments. It includes two candidates from SC/ST communities each and five from the OBC category. 

In stark contrast, the institute went on to recruit 39 candidates on the General Category seats. 

In 2023, despite the order to fill up vacant seats for SC, ST, OBCs groups through the Mission Mode Recruitment, IIT Kanpur kept on taking more general candidates, and not a single female SC/ST/OBC candidate was recruited.

Skewed Male-Female Ratio 

The gender-wise data provided by the country’s premier technical education institute reveals that it has 88% male faculty members and that only one female SC and ST faculty joined IIT Kanpur in 2023. 

No female candidate from the SC/ST/OBC categories was inducted in 2023; whereas, eight female candidates were recruited out of a total 39 selections in the general category.

The institute was in news recently when three students committed suicide on its campus within a span of one month from December 22 till January 19.  The institute later conceded to the demands pertaining to no termination policy to address the issue. 

Last year, reply to an RTI filed by the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle revealed that 16 of the 19 SC/ST cells established in the IITs were non-functional and existed only on paper.

The Mooknayak has sought the institute's reaction to the revelation. As and when it comes, the story will be updated.

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