Smriti to alter IIT chiefs selection norms

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Sep 22, 2014, DHNS: Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani is keen on scrapping the process of appointment of the directors of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) framed during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.

The existing procedure allows appointment of an IIT director for yet another term if his performance is adjudged as outstanding by the search and selection committee constituted to fill the post on expiry of the term of the incumbent.

Applications are invited from other candidates through advertisement only in the case where an incumbent director is not found to be fit for re-appointment or he refuses to continue in office for yet another term.

This process of appointment was approved by the IIT council last year, even as there were views within the council that such a system would “compromise the opportunity to wider contestation.”

Congress leader MM Pallam Raju was the HRD Minister and the chairperson of the Council when such a procedure for re-appointment of an IIT director was adopted.

 The directors of IIT-Bombay, IIT-Hyderabad and IIT-Gandhinagar were given another consecutive term under this system.

The appointment process did not find favour with Irani, the new HRD Minister. The Ministry proposed to scrap the system of re-appointment of directors recently after Chairperson of the board of governors of the IITs Ropar V S Ramamurthy resigned from his post following his differences with the search-cum-selection committee members over re-appointment of the institute’s incumbent director.

“The Ministry has proposed to do away with this process of appointment and revert to the old system where a director was appointed only through a wider contestation. Under the old system, if an incumbent director wanted to have yet another term, he had to apply for the post along with other applicants and face the entire screening process carried out to fill the vacancy,” sources told.