OBC Quota Seats not being Filled Appropriately by Central Varsities

Despite the centre’s argument that the “effective implementation” of 27% OBC quota seats began only in 2008, more than half of the centrally funded universities have not been able to completely fill up the seats reserved for the OBC candidates. The worst performers in this regards were the HNB Garhwal University in Uttarkhand and the Central University of Kashmir where the intake of the OBC candidates was only at 5.24% and 4.40% respectively in the academic session of 2014-15.

Some of the universities that performed poorly in filling up the OBC quota seats are Rajiv Gandhi University that admitted only 7% OBC students in 2014-15, the Central University of Jammu with just 16.30%, Central University of Tripura with just 16.34%, Central University of Tamil Nadu with just 19.19% intake of OBC students, Central University of Punjab just 20.13% and Vishwa Bharati University in West Bengal just 22.45%.

The representation of the OBC candidates in the 32 of the total 75 centrally-funded technical institutions including three of the seven older IITs remained dismal. The filling up of OBC quota seats in the undergraduate engineering programs did not go beyond 25% in these institutes.

The representation of the OBC students in IIT Kanpur was 18.90%, in IIT Delhi it was 21.52% and in IIT Bombay it was only 24.70%. The case of IIT-Roorkee was quite unique as it expelled 73 students for underperformance where the majority of these students were from the reserved categories.

Out of the total 30 NITs nearly half of them were not able to fill the seats reserved under OBC quota at 27% in various undergraduate engineering programmes. It was noted that NIT Agartala admitted only 15.03% OBC students in the academic year of 2014-15.

In the Indian Institute of Science and Research (IISERs) the admission percentage of the OBC candidates was in the range of 14.87 to 26.86%. IISER Bhopal was an exception where 28.31% of students were enrolled in the reserved categories. Recently the Ministry for Human Resource Development drew a rap from the parliamentary committee after it cited the “Unavailability of suitable candidates” as the reason for the failure of the centrally funded varsities to fill up the OBC quota seats.

In a report tabled in the Parliament during the winter session it stated,” The approach of the universities and other technical institutes has been rather lax in providing due representation to OBC students.”

The ministry’s argument that successive litigations challenging constitutional validity of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 delayed the effective implantation of the law that was passed by Parliament on January 3, 2007 and later on amended in 2012, was also disapproved by the panel headed by the BJP MP Rajen Gohain.