The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) has urged the education department of the Tamil Nadu government to speed up filling of backlog vacancies of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in higher educational institutions across the state.

Villupuram MP and senior VCK leader D. Ravikumar, in a letter to the Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister, K. Ponmudi, urged him to speed up filling of backlogs for SC teaching and non-teaching staff in government colleges and government-aided colleges with immediate effect.

Ravikumar in the letter said a report on the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) which was released on June 10 has found that there is a huge backlog of vacancies for SCs in higher educational institutions.

The survey points out that the number of teaching posts has increased to 2,02,085 for  2019-20 as compared to 1,68,959 posts during 2011-12. The VCK leader said even after 33,126 teaching posts were created in the last nine years there is a huge backlog of vacancies in teaching positions in the SC category. The letter said this was a matter of grave concern.

Ravikumar said if the stipulated quota of 18 per cent for the SC community was implemented regarding the teaching posts in Tamil Nadu, as many as 36,375 persons should have been appointed out of 2,02,085 posts. The senior VCK leader said, however, there are only 22,058 faculty positions in the state and nearly 14,317 teaching posts have been denied to SCs and are lying vacant.

He said the same situation is prevailing in the case of non-teaching staff for SCs and 4,643 non-teaching posts were denied to SCs.

He called upon the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government to bring out a detailed list of backlog vacancies for SC communities in government colleges of Tamil Nadu and said a special drive must be conducted to fill these vacancies for SCs.