MPs seek HRD Minister's intervention

JNU quota policy

New Delhi, April 5: Parliamentarians from across parties on Thursday urged Human Resource Development Minister, Prakash Javadekar, to intervene in the alleged bypassing of reservation system for SCs, STs and OBCs at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The letter — signed by more than 30 parliamentarians from the Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the NCP and others — was a result of an earlier plea from the JNU Students’ Union. The plea was sent on Monday to the Lok Sabha’s Committee on Petitions through CPI-M MP Jitendra Choudhury, a member of the panel.

The petitioners in the letter — as students origilly did — argued against current method of selection criteria for admission in M.Phil and Ph.D programmes in the university, according to which one requires to score at least 50 per cent in the written exam to qualify for the viva voce or oral exam, with no provision for any reservation. The students in the letter had said that not only the 50 per cent cut-off is uniform for all categories of students but the subsequent viva is also accorded 100 per cent weightage, which goes against recommendations made by a committee formed at the varsity level to prevent chances of discrimition.

“The university constituted a committee in 2016 to study the discrimition in the admission process with special reference to viva voce. The committee submitted its report based on the data (2012-2015), which recommended that the discrimitory pattern would get mitigated if the viva is reduced from 30 marks to 15 marks,” the letter said. The letter gains importance in the light of the complete lock-down the JNU students are observing for three weeks now, with reservation being the most prominent issue on their chart. (IANS)