As the Elders expressed concern on Thursday over reducing reserved seats for SC, ST and OBC in teaching positions in universities, the Government assured the Rajya Sabha that it was committed to upholding constitutional right of reservations and has put on hold interviews and recruitment pending a decision on Special leave Petition (SlP) in the Supreme Court against a court order. Other issues to figure prominently in the Upper House included increasing mob violence, misuse of social media and perceived notion about decreasing population of Hindus in Bangladesh.
When the issue of reservation was raised in Zero Hour by Ramgopal Yadav(Samajwadi Party) protesting against a recent University Grants Commission(UGC)notification and leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad backing Yadav's contention, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said the government was committed to 50 per cent reservation. He also said the government was "not with the Allahabad High Court ruling." Consequently, the UGC and his ministry had filed SlPs and the next hearing was listed on August 13, he informed the agitated members.
The Allahabad High Court ruling in last April struck down a circular prescribing institution-wise reservation to fill vacant faculty positions. Javadekar said the High Court order was later upheld by the Supreme Court, forcing UGC to issue the March 5 circular laying down a new mechanism for implementing faculty reservations. It entailed calculating total posts department or subject-wise rather than institution-wise. This meant calculating reservation in teaching posts by department, instead of basing the quota as on the number of posts available at university.
Previously, SC, ST and OBC faculty positions were calculated by treating the entire university as a unit. It grouped all posts of a grade, such as assistant profession, in all departments of a university to calculate quota.
Under the new formula, where every department will be considered one separate unit, there will be a lower chance of positions being set aside for quota as there may be fewer openings.
The Opposition flagged the issue of increasing mob violence and lynching and demanded that the House condemn the attack on social activist Swami Agnivesh in Jharkhand and that the culprits be immediately arrested. Raising the issue, R K Rangarajan (CPI-M) alleged that activists of the Janta Yuva Morcha and Bajrang Dal had attacked Agnivesh.
Countering perception that the population of Hindus in Bangladesh was declining after Swapan Dasgupta(Nominated) raised it, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the Question Hour quoted official records of that country to state that it has instead risen by two per cent in 2017. In 2011, the Hindu population was 8.4 per cent and it rose to 10.7 per cent in 2017, she said. The minister also allayed apprehensions about security aspects of passport through mobile app and said fake passport through cyber cafes will be rejected automatically by the app.
law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said he will hold discussion with stakeholders, including political parties, to evolve a policy to deal with the menace of misuse of the social media. He said this in the Rajya Sabha in response to a suggestion in this regard by Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, after several members expressed concern over the misuse of the social media and the lynching incidents.