IIT students protest against discrimination

New Delhi: Scores of students from the Indian Institute of Technology- Delhi, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University yesterday held demonstrations, seeking justice for 28 students who were expelled from the IIT.

"All the students were lower casts and faced caste-based discrimination and harassment from the faculty and the administration," Ravindra, one of the expelled students, alleged.

He said the faculty singled them out as Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes students and declared them weak students, "incapable of doing well".

Twenty-eight students were expelled from the IIT-Delhi earlier this year on the grounds of low academic performance. While 20 of them are from the Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes, the others are from the general category and the Other Backward Classes and minority communities.

The protesters, demonstrating outside the IIT campus in Delhi argued that the evaluation and grading system was arbitrary and lacked transparency. They also said the faculty were influenced by their personal prejudices in their grading.

"The lives of all of us students have been ruined," Ravindra added.

The students said that the National Commission for Scheduled Castes has informed them that it is "unconstitutional to expel students on the grounds of low academic performance".

Time to reply

The commission has asked IIT-Delhi director Surendra Prasad to reconsider the decision and has given the administration 15 days time from June 17 to reply.

Following the commission's directive, the IIT-Delhi has set up a committee to review the situation.

But the students were not satisfied.

The protesters demand the 28 students' expulsion be immediately revoked and that the existing review committee be disbanded.

They want an independent committee comprising "socially sensitive members" to be constituted.