The Hindu : Front Page : 9 per cent seats for OBCs in IITs

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Thursday, Apr 17, 2008
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9 per cent seats for OBCs in IITs

Staff Reporter

Reservation to be implemented over the next three years

120 students each for IITs in Bihar, Rajasthan
and Hyderabad
Number of faculty positions need to be doubled

NEW DELHI: Institutes of excellence — the seven Indian Institutes of Technology; Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University; and Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad — have decided to stagger the implementation of the other backward classes quota over the next three years to achieve the mandatory 27 per cent reservation.

To make room for candidates from the OBC quota, these institutes will earmark 9 per cent of the total seats for them and increase the overall number of seats by 13 per cent from the present academic year.

Announcing the decision here on Wednesday after a meeting of the Directors of the IITs, Director of IIT-Delhi Dr. Surinder Prasad said: “Starting this year, 9 per cent of seats in all the seven IITs, IT BHU and ISM Dhanbad will be reserved for OBC students.

The percentage of seats will be gradually increased to attain 27 per cent OBC reservation by Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) 2010, based on the proposals submitted by individual institutions to the Empowered Committee and accepted by the Central government.”

The three new IITs — Bihar, Rajasthan and Hyderabad — will, however, implement 27 per cent reservation for OBCs and 22.5 per cent reservation for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from JEE 2008 onwards. The total intake of students in these three new IITs will be 120 each.

Assuring that the institutes will take the required steps to ensure that their position as centres of excellence is maintained, Director of IIT-Guwahati Gautam Barua said there was, however, a need to expeditiously release additional funds for the institutes.

“To meet the expenses generated by the increase in the number of seats and the infrastructure, the Central government will have to expedite the process of allocating more resources and making the remunerations more attractive,” he said.

The IITs currently face a shortage of faculty and with the increase in the number of seats, the number of faculty positions will be doubled.

Referring to the selection criterion for OBC students, Dr. Prasad said: “The cut-off for OBC category students will be 90 per cent of the cut-off of general category students in the JEE 2008 examination.”

Creamy layer

Eligible students in the OBC category will, however, need to certify that they do not belong to the creamy layer.

The directives of the Supreme Court forwarded by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development will be used for the categorisation of the eligible OBC students. And for the purpose of uniformity in admission, a central list of OBCs will be drawn up for reference of the institutions.

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