JU faces flak from minority panel

Updated on: Monday, November 23, 2009

Kolkata: If findings of the Justice Rajinder Sachar Commitee over representation of minorities in government jobs have made you sit up, there is more in store.

The Sachar report would seem to be an understatement if one takes a look at their plight in the state universities. And eyebrows have already raised over the dismal number of Muslim teachers in the five-star Jadavpur University in comparison to its total faculty strength. Only six out of the 665 (less than one per cent) teachers here are Muslims.

The fact came to light in a comminque from the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) to JU following a controversy over filling up of a lecturer’s post in the geology department. The NCM expressed its “serious concern over under-representation/ near absence of minority communities, particularly Muslims, in the academic staff of Jadavpur University.” The commission suggested that the university should take “certain voluntary affirmative measures to increase the representation of minorities”.

The department, it seems, is unfazed. It has triggered yet another controversy recently, and this time over the recruitment of a professor. It could be a reason why senior teacher Pulak Sengupta put in his papers a couple of days after assuming charge as head of the department.

The university drew flak from the NCM in the earlier case after a duly qualified Babar Ali Shah, a department of science and technology (DST)’s young scientist with a PhD degree from JU, was denied the lecturer’s post.

The post went to an otherwise brilliant student who did not have a PhD degree on the date of joining. The NCM bench, after hearing Babar’s complaint and the university’s argument, made some caustic remarks about the selection process. Without questioning JU’s authority, the bench held that “prima facie it is a clear case of favouritism and discrimination by JU”. (TNN)

It is not without reason that the University Grants Commission (UGC) in its recent recruitment guidelines to universities has made it mandatory to keep one expert from a minority community and one from the SC/ST category in the selection committee for recruitment of teachers.

JU vice-chancellor Pradip Narayan Ghosh appreciates the problem, but blames it on the educational backwardness of the Muslims for such a situation. “What do we do? Very few among the Muslims come up to this level. There is no quota for them in recruitment for teachers. We can’t do injustice to others in a bid to encourage them. There have been occasions where we could find experts from the minority community, though in Babar Ali Shah’s case we had one in the selection committee,” Ghosh said.

The V-C might have his academic arguments, but Babar Ali Shah is not the one who was far behind the shortlisted candidates. The UGC awarded him research scholarships, the CSIR engaged him as research associate, and he is the principal investigator of a research project under the DST and doing his research in collaboration with the University of Manchester.

The vice-chancellor, however, is not paying heed to the NCM suggestion to accommodate the candidate in future vacancies. In fact, after this suggestion, the university advertised for a lecturer’s post for geology in April 2009 and the interview was held in November. Babar Ali Shah was one among the 16 applicants. None of them was found suitable. “The university has responded to the NCM communique. We have explained our position and the NCM went silent since then,” the vice-chancellor said.

JU faces flak from minority panel

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