Since the eligibility criteria applies both to general as well as reserved category students, no SC, ST or OBC candidate has qualified for the interview in some courses. (Express Photo/Kamleshwar Singh/File)
Days after The Indian Express reported that several MPhil and PhD seats were going to go vacant in Delhi University as a result of adopting the 2016 UGC notification, which requires candidates to score 50% in their entrance exam to be eligible for an interview, DU on Saturday cancelled and postponed the interviews till further notice.
“According to the directions received from the competent authority of the university, the recently conducted interviews for admission into the MPhil programme, department of history, are cancelled. PhD interviews scheduled for the 30th and 31st are postponed. Kindly wait for further instructions,” read a notice signed by Sunil Kumar, head of the history department at DU.
G Rajagopal, head of the department of modern Indian languages, also issued a notice: “As directed by the competent authority of our university, interviews scheduled for admission to MPhil, PhD programmes stand cancelled till further notice. All students concerned are requested to take note.”
Ashutosh Bhardwaj, Officer on Special Duty (Admissions), said: “There was some issue regarding the reservation policy so we have postponed the interviews. We will come up with a notice soon regarding when these interviews will be held.”
As reported by The Indian Express on July 26, with the new University Grants Commission (UGC) norms in place, several MPhil and PhD seats in DU are set to go vacant this year.
Since the eligibility criteria applies both to general as well as reserved category students, no SC, ST or OBC candidate has qualified for the interview in some courses. Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha, also a teacher at DU, raised this issue in the House on Thursday and submitted a note to Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.