Chennai, June 15(BPNS)

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

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

The Member of Parliament in the letter mentioned that 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 Scheduled Caste communities in higher education institutions.

The survey points out that the number of teaching posts has increased to 2,02,085 for the year 2019-20 as against 1,68,959 posts in 2011-12.  He said that even after 33126 teaching posts were created in the last nine years there is a huge backlog of vacancies in teaching positions in the SC category. In the letter, the MP said that this was a matter of grave concern.

Ravikumar said that if the stipulated quota of 18% for the SC’s were implemented regarding the teaching posts in Tamil Nadu, as many as 36,375 persons should have been appointed out of the 2,02,085 posts. The senior leader said that however, there are only 22,058 faculty positions in the state and that around 14,317 teaching posts have been denied to SC’s and are remaining vacant.

The VCK leader said that the same situation is prevailing in the case of non-teaching staff for Scheduled Castes and 4643 non-teaching posts were denied to SCs.

He called upon the DMK government to bring out a detailed list of backlog vacancies for SC communities in government colleges of Tamil Nadu and said that a special drive be conducted to fill these vacancies for SC communities.