Students flay Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology for grant bias

Thiruvananthapuram: In the blog Kafila, activist J. Devika, an associate professor at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) has revealed details of a petition sent by SC/ST students of Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes against discrimination in awarding scholarships.

The petition pointed out that JEE cut-off rank for SC/ST students is lower than that of general category (GC) students.

However, the minimum cumulative grade point average (CGPA) required for scholarship is the same—7.5—for both SC/ST and GC students.

Consequently, almost all SC/ST students are forced to pay tuition fees and other expenses from the second year. Ms Devika said 7.5 CGPA was really a very high score.

“I remember, my student days at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the 1990’s while I was doing my master’s. I got only 7.3 CGPA. Even the highest scorer had only 7.5. In fact, only three students had got a CGPA above seven in our course,” she told DC.

“CGPA depended on a lot of factors including marks awarded by teachers in internal evaluation. The letter was sent to me by a group of concerned people. They prefer to stay nameless only because they feared victimisation if they came out in public”.

Sources said that for admissions to IIST while general candidates needed, at least, 100 marks out of 504, along with eight marks out of 168 in each subject in the entrance exams, for SC candidates, the minimum mark for entrance exams was 50 and four marks in each subject.

Of the 60 seats each for BTech Aerospace Engineering), BTech (Avionics) and 20 seats for Five Year Dual Degree (BTech Plus MS/MTech), 15 percent of the seats are reserved for SC and seven percent for ST.