After Delhi IIT, it is the turn of Kharagpur IIT, which is facing a racial discrimination charge against a Dalit student, as per a writ filed by the 23 year-old student in the Supreme Court (SC) on 17th Feb’09 accusing IIT Kharagpur (West Bengal) for expelling him for the second time in two years for leading a group of 14 Scheduled Caste students to protest against racial bias and discrimination at the institute.
However the institute director D. Acharya taking to press denied the allegation and said that the student was asked to leave the institute because of his poor academic performance leading to his failure to securing bare minimum marks required to continue in the institute.
Previously, as reported by this writer, the Delhi IIT was forced to accept the expelled Scheduled Caste students by an order of the SC. However repeated recurrence of this type of incidents at the premier Engineering institutes like IITs throws open an uncomfortable question about the shaken confidence of the Dalit students in the successful implementation of Reservation Policy of the National Government as guaranteed by the Constitution.
Incidentally Kharagpur IIT expelled 14 scheduled Caste students (including the boy who has now filed writ petition in the SC) in 2007 for poor performance. However the student who has now filed the writ, led the group to meet human resource development minister Arjun Singh. The boys were however reinstated after the intervention of the minister.
The expelled boy in his writ has further mentioned that, on that occasion an assistant professor of the humanities expelled him from the class after he returned to the class after intervention of Arjun Singh, shouting aloud, “Who is this Arjun Singh to interfere in the IIT matters.”
The boy, apart from petitioning SC has also written to the Dalit members of Parliament and Arjun Singh to intervene in the matter.
It is felt in the educational circles that if like IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur is also made to accept the student by the court, the incidents (of losing battle in SC) on the back of each other would be very embarrassing for the IITs in general and they may have to rewrite the rules for the expulsion of students to avoid such awkward situations (of facing caste bias charges) in future.
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