DU clueless about vacant OBC seats in colleges
1 Oct 2008: The Times of India
NEW DELHI: A month-and-a-half after admissions for the 2008-09 academic session, Delhi University (DU) has no idea about the number of vacant OBC seats.
The first semester ended on Tuesday and vacations will stretch to October 15. Yet, so far neither the vice-chancellor’s office nor the dean of students’ welfare office has the admission data and number of seats which have remained unfilled at different affiliated colleges of the university.
Meanwhile, on Monday, the Supreme Court observed that seats remaining vacant after implementing the 27% OBC quota in central educational institutions have to go to general category candidates in the same academic year and cannot be carried forward to be filled later.
The court’s direction followed Solicitor General G E Vahanvati’s reference to the judgment on the issue written by another member of the Bench, Justice Dalveer Bhandari. The Bench refused to entertain the Centre’s argument to fill the left-over vacancies after three years when the 27% OBC quota implementation is attained and said ‘‘this means, till three years seats would go vacant.’’
Speaking to TOI, Deepak Pental, vice-chancellor, DU, said: ‘‘First we have no data on the number of vacant seats and it will take some time before we collect them from individual colleges. We have no short cuts, so the Supreme Court or the MHRD are welcome to collect the data. Second and most importantly, the admissions are over and this issue has gone too far. We will be implementing the SC’s order from next year.’’
The office of the dean of students’ welfare (DSW) is supposed to have the details of the admissions of the university. When contacted, S K Vij, dean, DSW, said that it is the duty of the college to submit the status and ‘‘since they haven’t, we don’t have the number.’’
When contacted, only some colleges revealed the number of vacant seats. Acharya Narendra Dev College (ANDC) has seven unfilled seats, while Hans Raj College has eight seats according to its principal. Although LSR sources didn’t confirm the number, the college has a few vacant seats. According to SRCC officials there are no vacancies, while Gargi College officials revealed that only 52 of the 112 seats were filled this time. The acting principal of Sri Venkateswara College said that the college had 94 seats of which a few of them were left unfilled.
But there are colleges which refused to divulge the numbers, saying they are waiting for a notification from the university to reveal the numbers.
On condition of anonymity, a faculty member of the DU said: ‘‘We are happy all the seats are not filled. Infrastructure wise most colleges are not ready to bear the extra strength.’’
Even principals of different colleges echoed the same. Savitri Singh, principal, ANDC, said that the college is in dire need of help as the infrastructure and the other facilities are going to crumble due to the extra pressure.
‘‘I can’t increase any more seats next year in the present situation. I will write to the university on this,’’ said Singh. S R Arora, principal of Hans Raj College also made similar statements saying that without developing the present infrastructure, the college will not be able to increase its intake.
