Parliamentary Panel Seeks Response to Discrimination Allegation, UP Institute Suspends ST Professor

New Delhi: More than seven months after the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) recommended his promotion, and despite intervention from a parliamentary committee, a teacher at an Allahabad institution who belongs to the Scheduled Tribes remains suspended, The Hindu has reported.

Assistant professor Venkatesh Naik of Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), Allahabad, taught in the electrical engineering department, has long alleged caste-based discrimination at the institute. Naik said that he faced discrimination and was also denied a promotion in 2023.

The report says that the NCST had, in March, directed the institute to process Naik's promotion with retrospective effect, but the order has still not been implemented.

Naik’s situation was also taken up by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Faggan Singh Kulaste in late September. The committee sought responses from the education ministry and MNNIT. The report says that just as the panel began pressing the authorities, MNNIT placed Naik under suspension on September 19, claiming that there had been complaints from colleagues. The report mentions that the complainants were some of the same colleagues who Naik had earlier accused of discrimination.

Speaking to The Hindu, Naik said, “Till now, I remain suspended, and my e-mails to follow through from the meeting have received no response.”

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