9 per cent OBC quota at IITs this year

Thu, Apr 17 01:10 AM

Seven branches of IIT will reserve nine per cent seats for OBC category students in the 2008-09 academic session, a joint admission board decided in a meeting on Wednesday. Directors of the seven IITs, along with representatives of IT BHU and ISM Dhanbad said that admissions into the JEE 2008 will be done taking into account the reservation for OBC category students.

However, the three new IITs, proposed in Rajasthan, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh will implement 27 per cent reservation. "The new IITs will take in 50 per cent general category students and the rest will be from SC, ST and OBC categories.

But the existing IITs will implement the entire 27 per cent reservation by 2010," said Prof Surendra Prasad, director, IIT Delhi. The IITs will have to double the existing strength of faculty in order to cope with the extra students.

"At IIT Delhi we have a sanctioned strength of 556 faculty positions and roughly 420 are filled," said Prasad. "If we plan to implement 27 per cent OBC quota by 2010 we will need to double faculty strength in the next two years.

" The IITs say it is up to the government to provide guidelines to screen out creamy layer from the OBC category. "In case the guidelines do not reach us in time, we will conduct admissions on the same OBC criteria used in jobs," said Prof Gautam Barua, director, IIT Guwahati.

Of the 3.21 lakh applicants, only 23 per cent are from the OBC category.

The IIMs, on the other hand, would implement OBC reservations based on the Moily Committee's roadmap. They will have to implement the quota ranging from six per cent at IIM-Ahmedabad to three per cent at IIM-Kolkata in the first year.

IIM-Bangalore will implement seven per cent, IIM-Kozikode 4.5 and IIM-Lucknow eight per cent.

The HRD ministry is likely to issue a directive to educational institutions on implementing the quota before next week. A senior HRD ministry official said that Moily's roadmap for implementing the quota is likely to be applicable for all institutions of higher learning.

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