IIT Delhi has received less than 10 per cent of the funds promised by the Centre more than three years ago to enable it to build the infrastructure necessary to implement reservation for the economically weaker sections (EWS).
Of the Rs 66.28 crore the education ministry had committed, the tech school has so far received Rs 5.2 crore (7.8 per cent).
None of the colleges affiliated to Delhi University (DU) — a central university — has received any additional grants for infrastructure or sanction for new faculty posts to handle the extra load arising out of EWS reservation.
The Centre introduced the 10 per cent EWS quota in higher education and jobs in early 2019. To ensure that other categories of students do not lose out, it asked campuses to increase student intake by 25 per cent over two years. For this, institutions need additional classrooms, hostel seats and labs, apart from additional teachers.
Responding to a question on Friday, P.V. Rao, dean (planning), IIT Delhi, said the institute hoped to get the EWS funds soon.
“(A sum of) Rs 66.28 crore has been committed by the government for EWS quota expansion. We have received the funds partly,” Rao told a news conference on the eve of the institute’s convocation.
To accommodate the EWS quota candidates, a total of 214,766 additional seats have been created in central educational institutions, including 6,708 seats in the IITs. The government has approved an expenditure of Rs 4,315 crore to implement EWS reservation at 150 centrally funded institutions.
An IIT Bombay faculty member implied that the sums committed to the tech schools was meagre, saying each IIT would need Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 3,000 crore to build the infrastructure necessary to implement the EWS quota.
Abha Dev Habib, a teacher at Miranda House College and former member of DU’s executive council, said “none of the (affiliated) colleges has received any grant (for additional infrastructure) or (sanction for) new posts”.
“The university has taken feedback from the colleges three times about how much additional funds they need and how many additional posts should be created. But on the ground nothing has happened,” she said.
“When the UPA government implemented the 27 per cent quota for the Other Backward Classes, it gave adequate funds on time for infrastructure. It increased the teachers’ strength by 54 per cent, but this took over 10 years,” she added.
“Now there is no assurance on creation of infrastructure or sanctioning additional (teaching) posts. The quality of education will suffer.”
In many colleges, the classrooms are overcrowded. Colleges set up 30-40 years ago have classrooms for 50 students that are now forced to accommodate 80 students.
An email sent to higher education secretary Sanjay Murthy seeking the reasons for the delay in the release of EWS quota expansion funds has remained unanswered.
Convocation
Nearly 2,100 IIT Delhi students will receive their degrees on Saturday. Economics Nobel winner Abhijit Banerjee will be chief guest at the institute’s 53rd annual convocation ceremony.
Director Rangan Banerjee said that successful students of the joint PhD programme run by IIT Delhi and the National Chiao Tung University of Taiwan will receive their degrees for the first time.
He said three centrally air-conditioned student hostels named Dronagiri, Saptagiri and Sahyadri had been opened. IIT Delhi plans to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure throughout the campus to promote the use of these eco-friendly vehicles among the campus community.
