MUMBAI: Despite a special recruitment drive for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) faculty members, the representation of the SC, ST and OBCs (Other Backward Communities) remains low at IIT Bombay. According to RTI data accessed by HT, as of September this year, the institute had only five SCs and six OBCs among its 412 professors. There is no professor from the ST communityAt the associate and assistant professor levels, the institute has 363 faculty members. Of these, 29 are from the SC community, eight are STs while 35 are OBCs. The RTI also shows that IIT Bombay has 1,225 approved teaching positions, of which 450 are vacant.
The RTI was filed by Gowd Kiran Kumar, chairperson of the All India OBC Students Association. In an earlier RTI filed by him, the reply he received from IIT Bombay in February said that it had 33 faculty members from the SC community across the professor, associate professor and assistant professor levels. There was one associate professor and seven assistant professors from the ST community, while 41 OBC faculty members were working at the institute at that time..
