A report compiled by the Ambedkar Students' Association at the University of Hyderabad has alleged ‘gross discrimination’ in the PhD admission process, in the interview marks given to candidates from reserved categories. Particularly seven departments — Computer Science, Biochemistry, Physics, Plant Sciences, Electronics, Applied Mathematics, and Microbiology—have been accused of favouring unreserved category candidates over candidates from Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories in the interviews.
Based on department-wise details of interview and entrance exam marks of PhD candidates obtained under the Right to Information Act, ASA found that SC, ST, and OBC candidates were marked much lower than those from unreserved category in the interviews, despite similar marks in the entrance exam. “The findings give an impression that the students were marked in the interviews deliberately as if to ensure that the general category seats are occupied exclusively by students belonging to the unreserved category,” ASA said in its report.
Ambedkar Students' Association prepared and submitted a 7-page report on discriminatory marking of reserved category students in PhD interviews. The report establishes that there is a consistent pattern of discriminatory marking almost resembling the hierarchical caste order. pic.twitter.com/lrGEk6opVf
— ASA HCU (@asahcu) March 30, 2023
The report looks at the top five scorers of each department in each category (unreserved/OBC/SC/ST), and compares their interview marks with entrance exam marks, to demonstrate the alleged bias in evaluation. “The discriminatory marking in these departments almost resembles a structure of graded inequality where marks of students resemble their position in the caste hierarchy,” the report said.
For instance, the average entrance exam marks scored by the top five unreserved category candidates in the Computer Science department was 41.4, and the average of their interview marks was 24.6. But for OBC candidates, while the average entrance exam marks was 40, nearly similar to those of unreserved category candidates, their average interview marks were much lower at 17.2.
Similarly, for SC candidates, the average entrance marks scored was 30.2, but the average of their interview marks was only 12. For ST candidates, the average entrance exam marks scored was 25.4, but the average interview marks remained at a negligible 6.6. A similar pattern was demonstrated with the average marks in the other six departments too, with the average interview marks given to candidates of unreserved, OBC, SC, ST categories falling into a hierarchical pattern.
ASA compiled the data for its study by finding out marks of candidates who had applied for the PhD programme recently through numerous RTI responses. Findings from the seven specified departments revealed that out of the 28 PhD seats in the general category, 27 were filled with students from unreserved category. “As opposed to this, in the remaining departments, out of the 79 seats, 34 seats have been filled by students from reserved categories,” ASA said.
ASA said that the findings reaffirm their proposition that admissions to the general category have been skewed in favour of unreserved category students in these seven departments, due to discriminatory marking in interviews.
“This is a subversion of the policy of affirmative action and turns the principle of social justice upside down. The reservation policy, which is supposed to ensure that there is a minimum percentage of students from reserved category, is now being used in the university to limit the number of reserved category students to the bare minimum. Categorisation, which exists solely for the purpose of positive discrimination, seems to have been used blatantly for negative discrimination, which is unconstitutional and a grave violation of the principle of social justice,” ASA’s report said.
Besides these seven departments, the ASA said that they have found a few “extreme cases of discriminatory marking” in other departments. For instance, according to ASA, four SC category students who appeared for the PhD interview in Material Engineering were marked 0.3, 1.9, 2.1 and 8.4 out of 30. “Seven out of the eight faculties in the panel have marked an SC student with zero marks. On what basis have seven faculties deemed a student completely unfit and denied even a single mark to a student, while such treatment has not been meted out to any other student of any other category?” ASA asked.
Similarly, an OBC candidate for PhD in Material Engineering who secured 41.25 marks in the written test (in which the top scorer got 43.25 marks) was given only 2.4 marks in the interview, with the marks of the panellists ranging from just 1.5 to 4. “If the student is able to clear the entrance paper set by the department with such high marks, what is the criteria employed for the interview that evaluates him with extremely low marks (2.4)?” ASA questioned.
The ASA demanded that the university immediately constitute a committee to review the pattern of alleged discrimination found in the seven departments. They stressed that the committee should have representatives from OBC, SC and ST communities and also include a students’ union member. “It should also come up with guidelines to prevent such patterns from recurring again,” ASA said.
They also argued that marking students who have qualified the entrance examination conducted by the same departments with zero marks in the interview had no rationale. “It undermines the validity of the exam conducted by the department itself. Further, we can see that such extremely low marks are given only to reserved category students. This adds to our suspicion that giving zero marks to a candidate is only a way to eliminate the student from their pursuit of higher education. We demand that no student is eliminated with dismal marks like zero in the interviews and all students are evaluated fairly,” the report said.
ASA also alleged that some of the departments, “where most stark differences in the interview marks were found,” refused to provide faculty-wise marks of the interview panel. “They responded to our RTIs that all the marks to the candidates were provided on the basis of common consensus and that there was no record of the individual marks provided by any faculty. This is a non-transparent way of marking candidates, further adds to the arbitrariness of the evaluation process and allows faculties to escape accountability. We demand that all members of the interview panel be required to provide individual marks to the candidates and maintain a record of the same,” the Association demanded.