As per information obtained through a Right To Information (RTI) request, the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) has allegedly accused the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, of “denying 80 seats to candidates from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) while admitting an additional 95 general category students for PhD admissions in 2023.”

Despite claiming to enforce reservation policies, the APPSC asserts that “IIT Bombay has once again broken them when it comes to PhD admissions,” as per Careers360. In five departments at IIT Bombay, the APPSC revealed that no ST candidates had been accepted in the previous eight years.

Reportedly, the latest RTI response states that five departments have no OBC candidates in 2023, while five departments have no SC students and 20 departments have not enrolled any ST students..

In a series of tweets on X (formerly known as Twitter), APPSC said, “Despite claiming that they are implementing it, @iitbombay has again violated reservation norms in PhD admissions this year. They denied the seats of 80 SC ST OBC students and gave it to savarnas. Some departments did not take a single Bahujan student.” (SIC)

Despite a sufficient number of students from each category passing the written test and showing up for interviews, according to the APPSC report, seats designated for marginalised categories were left empty. The Study Circle underlines the necessity of making institutes answerable for these inconsistencies, Careers360 reports.

Even though there were many candidates from the unreserved categories, reportedly just 9 per cent of the SC seats and 3 per cent of the ST seats in the PhD admissions for 2023 were filled. The data showed that, in comparison to general category admissions, SC and ST admissions continued to be disproportionately low out of the seats available.

According to the RTI response provided by the APPSC, the number of students admitted in each category in 2023 to pursue a PhD at IIT Bombay is listed below:

Scheduled Castes

Vacancy: 63

Applied: 899

Interviewed: 794

Admitted: 36

Scheduled Tribes

Vacancy: 34

Applied: 214

Interviewed: 182

Admitted: 12

Other Backward Classes

Vacancy: 114

Applied: 1,966

Interviewed: 1,672

Admitted: 83

General Category

Vacancy: 168

Applied: 4,407

Interviewed: 3,716

Admitted: 263