Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday challenged Congress MP Rahul Gandhi to provide evidence for his claim that the University Grants Commission’s draft guidelines on filling vacancies in higher education institutions were a “conspiracy” to end caste-based reservations.

On Monday, Gandhi claimed in a social media post: “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.”

Pradhan, however, said that appointments were made to 6,080 posts, of which Scheduled Castes constituted 14.3%, Scheduled Tribes 7% and Other Backward Classes 23.42%. He said that Gandhi should either provide concrete evidence backing his claim or publicly apologise for his “lies”.

The education minister made the statement in the context of a backlash against the University Grants Commission’s draft guidelines, which stated that a reserved vacancy “may be declared unreserved by following the procedure of de-reservation where after, it can be filled as an unreserved vacancy”. The draft guidelines were released on December 27.

After the document sparked widespread criticism, the Ministry of Education and the University Grants Commission on Sunday said that no reserved post can be de-reserved.

What did the draft guidelines say?

The draft document said that in “rare and exceptional cases” when a vacancy in Group A position cannot be allowed to remain vacant on account of public interest, a university may put forward a proposal to de-reserve the vacancy.

The proposal would need to mention the efforts made to fill up the post, the reasons why the position cannot remain vacant and the justification for de-reservation.

Gandhi on Monday alleged that the draft guidelines were “an attempt to murder the dreams of those struggling for social justice”.

He added: “BJP-RSS [Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh], which have even talked about reviewing reservation, now want to snatch the jobs of the deprived class from such higher education institutions.”

Earlier, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh alleged that there was a conspiracy to end reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in higher education institutions. He noted that some years ago, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat had said that there was a need to examine the reservation policy.

In 2015, Bhagwat had said that a panel of non-partisan observers should review the reservation policy. However, in September, he said that reservations should continue as long as discrimination exists in society.