Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday slammed the central government over the new University Grants Commission (UGC) draft, which proposed de-reservation of seats reserved for candidates from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in case enough candidates are not available.

Rahul Gandhi, who has been pushing for a caste-based census, claimed that the new draft of UGC is a conspiracy to end the reservation given to the SC, ST and OBCs.

“In the new draft of UGC, there is a conspiracy to end the reservation given to SC, ST and OBC categories in higher education institutions. Today, out of approximately 7,000 reserved posts in 45 central universities, 3,000 are vacant, and of which only 7.1% are Dalit, 1.6% tribal and 4.5% backward class professors,” the Congress leader wrote on ‘X’.

He further accused the BJP and its ideological mother RSS of trying to snatch the jobs of the deprived class.

“BJP-RSS, which have even talked about reviewing reservation, now want to snatch the jobs of the deprived class from such higher education institutions. This is an attempt to kill the dreams of the heroes fighting for social justice and to eliminate the participation of the deprived sections,” he said.

The Gandhi scion further vowed to continue fighting for the social justice and promised to fill vacant posts with candidates from the reserved categories.

“This is the difference between ‘symbolic politics’ and ‘real justice’ and this is the character of BJP. Congress will never allow this to happen – we will continue to fight for social justice and will fill these vacant posts only with qualified candidates from reserved categories,” he added.

His remarks came a day after the Union Education Ministry issued a clarification that it will not allow posts reserved for deprived sections of the society to be de-reserved.

“Reservation in Central Educational Institutions (CEI) is provided for all posts in direct recruitment in Teacher’s cadre as per the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019. After enactment of this Act, no reserved post is to be de-reserved. The Ministry of Education has given directives to all the CEIs to fill up the vacancies strictly as per the 2019 ACT,” the ministry said..