Director-General Shekhar Mande

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Director-General Shekhar Mande has assured that scholars holding doctoral degrees outside institutions of the Centrally Funded Technical Institutes (CFTIs) too will be eligible to apply for any teaching faculty positions at the National Institutes of Technology (NITs).

Mande, in the city recently, informed that all necessary communication regarding this has been made with the Ministry of Human Resource Development. “The decision will be reversed. Many directors of NITs have written to me and communicated the same,” Mande said.

Under rules that came into effect in 2019, students holding doctoral degrees from either laboratories or research institutions operating under the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), CSIR, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) along with state-run and private universities are not recognised under CFTI.

This meant that over 5,000 scholars stood ineligible to apply for any teaching faculty position at NITs and Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST).

The proposed exclusion was approved by the HRD ministry, which made it mandatory for all candidates applying for any teaching position at NITs to hold a doctoral degree from a CFTI-recognised institute.

To this, the student community from CSIR, DBT, TIFR and others had protested, stating that the move was unfair and biased. The students wrote letters to the several science-funding agencies, seeking their intervention but no decision was taken last year. Last month, student representatives of the Research Scholars of India had expressed their dissent on the “discriminatory” rule through a letter addressed to K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Advisor to the government of India.

Following the new rule that came into effect in early 2019, there were recruitment to numerous faculty positions held in at least four NITs. Some of the new recruits were hired by Sardar Vallabhai Patel National Institute of Technology, Surat, NIT-Jalandhar, NIT-Allahabad and NIT-Warangal.

Commenting on the recruitment that was conducted with this exclusion, the CSIR DG said, “I do not know (about the recruitment) but it will be unfair to ask the recruiters to reverse their decision of those candidates who have been recruited already. However, it is true that equal opportunity was not given to all (candidates) in the selection procedure conducted. But now, our job is to ensure that a similar instance does not happen in future.”