Mumbai: Five departments at IIT-B have not admitted a PhD scholar from the scheduled tribe (ST) category between 2015 and 2022, according to data revealed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. In 2022, the percentage of SC doctoral student admissions was around 5%, that of ST students was 11% and that of OBC was around 3%. These numbers stood at 8%, 1%, and 20%, respectively, in 2019.
The departments are; Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, Centre for Tech Alternatives for Rural Areas, Centre for Studies in Resource Engineering and Education Technology. In these years around 207 ST students applied for PhD in these departments.
Meanwhile, departments like Environment Science and Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Mathematics, and Centre for Policy Studies admitted only one student from the ST category in their respective departments. In the last eight years, the Department of Centre for Research in Nanotech and Science admitted two students out of 137 who applied.
The government of India’s (GoI) norms require 10% of all seats to be reserved for students from economically weaker sections; 27% for OBC students; 15% for SC students; 7.5% for ST students; and 5% for students with physical disabilities.
In a tweet, APPSC IIT Bombay said, “New RTI data shows that despite raising the issue of lack of representation of SC ST OBC in PhD admissions, there are still 5 departments in @iitbombay who have not admitted a single ST candidate in last 8 years.” Officials from IITB say that IITB is committed to recruiting more students in the reserved categories to fill the gap.