Imphal, February 24: While endorsing the call of All Tribal Students' Union Manipur asking tribal students of Manipur university to pull out from the varsity effective from march 1, the Manipur University Tribal Students' Union has demanded among others amendment of certain acts governing the University failing which adhering to the call of ATSUM would be the only option.

According to a release issued by the MUTSU general secretary today, the demands raised concern amending the Manipur University Act 2005 and to incorporate a special provision to ensure 32.2 percent reservation for the Scheduled Tribes at all level - both teaching and non teaching staff 'as per existing reservation pattern of the Government of Manipur which is based on strength of tribal population in the State'.

Proposing that the reservation should be based on the total number of vacancies at the time of advertisement for recruitment excluding the backlogs, MUTSU urged forbidding alleged practice of creating department-wise cadres and piece-meal recruitment that tends to create a single post or cadre to artificially reduce the number of posts in order to avoid reservation.

Ban on further recruitment till amendment of Manipur University's reservation policy and special recruitment drive for STs to fill up back-log posts both for teaching and non-teaching staff or establishment of a separate Hill University for the tribals of manipur are the other main highlight of the MUTSU demand.

Cautioning authorities concerned that any further deprivation of rights of the tribal people would be detrimental to social tranquillity, the MUTSU also called upon the masses to understand the genuine cause and contribute their mite in ensuring tribal students do not leave the varsity enmasse on the specified date.

MUTSU also dismissed as 'bunch of lies' with regard to the clarification of the University's Vice chancellor on the reservation issue.

Observing that minimal representation of tribal candidates (3) in the varsity's teaching faculty strength of 143, 38 tribals compared to 322 non-teaching staff strength and the fact that tribal community makes up seven of the nine post of employees engaged as sweepers clearly reflects discriminatory policy of MU before it was upgraded to a Central varsity, MUTSU said authorities concerned need to take concrete measures to ensure such repression of tribal people's intellect and opportunity do not persist even after the university comes under the Central Government.

Explaining further, MUTSU pointed to tribal candidates far exceeding general candidates when one studies UGC/NET results every year and fumed whether hard earned JRF, NET and PhD certificates of tribal candidates are to run after menial jobs.

Contrary to high success rate of tribal candidates and availability of qualified individuals a myth is being propagated that deletion of tribals during recruitment exercises is due to cerebral inferiority, lambasted the student body while referring to 35 ST candidates and 17 from the general category completing JRF/NET course as per Dec 2005 result to drive home the point.

Besides this, there are a good number of tribal students of manipur who hold MPhil and PhD degrees from MU and other universities who are still unemployed due to such systematic social exclusion policies, it alleged.

In addition to the MU authorities denying the tribals their reservation rights prior to the varsity's elevation Centre's reservation policy on admission and job had never been implemented in the true sense as was manifested in the recruitment of 70 teaching posts in various departments (No.MU/4-16/94Fcy (Pt-IV) dated 9th June 2006, MUTSU contended.

Divulging further it said out of the 70 posts only one was reserved for ST category which too is yet to be filled up till date.

MU authorities have also been charged of favouring the majority community in all aspects of the university's administration at the cost of the tribal people under the pretext of being OBC category candidates contrary to reservation of only 27 percent for the OBCs in employment and admission.

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