Facing criticism over the University Grants Commission’s recently released draft guidelines proposing “de-reserving” of reserved posts in faculty recruitment in “rare and exceptional cases”, the Union Ministry of Education (MoE) on Sunday evening clarified its stance on the issue, saying no reserved post can be de-reserved.

The UGC also directed all central educational institutions to fill up vacancies strictly as per the central government’s reservation norms.

The UGC, which is the higher education regulator, put out the draft “Guidelines for Implementation of the Reservation Policy of the Government of India in Higher Education Institutes (HEIs)” in the public domain for feedback from stakeholders in November last year.

Under the guidelines, the UGC proposed to de-reserve the posts reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) candidates if they remained vacant due to not having enough such candidates available. The draft rule on the de-reservation of seats was widely criticised by teachers and students calling it the “killing of the ethos of social justice”.

Several students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) also staged a protest against the order on Sunday, prompting its vice-chancellor Santishree D Pandit to issue a statement.

The Education Ministry released a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying: “Reservation in Central Educational Institutions (CEI) is provided for all posts in direct recruitment in Teacher’s cadre as per the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019. After enactment of this Act, no reserved post is to be de-reserved. Ministry of Education has given directives to all the CEIs to fill up the vacancies strictly as per the 2019 ACT.”

The draft norms state that there is a general ban on the de-reservation of reserved vacancies in case of direct recruitment. “However, in rare and exceptional cases when a vacancy in a Group A service cannot be allowed to remain vacant in the public interest, the University concerned may prepare a proposal for de-reservation of the vacancy,” read the draft guidelines.

It also says that de-reservation in case of Group C and D shall go to the Executive Council of a University while in case of Group A and B, it must be referred to the MoE.

Meanwhile, UGC chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar too put out a statement on X, saying: “This is to clarify that there has been no de-reservation of reserved category positions in Central Education Institutes (CEIs) in the past and there is going to be no such de-reservation. It is important for all HEIs to ensure that all backlog positions in reserved categories are filled up through concerted efforts.”

However, the draft guidelines on reservation in HEIs on the UGC website, also propose that in case of promotion, if a sufficient number of SC/ST candidates fit for promotion against reserved post vacancies are not available, such positions may be ‘de-reserved’ and filled in by candidates from other communities. The power to approve the same will rest with the MoE.

According to UGC officials, the draft norms are not finalised yet and hence nothing from it could be implemented as of yet.