More OBC students in JNU before reservation
June 22, 2009: Education Times, The Times of India
The Supreme Court directive to reserve 27% seats for OBC candidates in higher education institutions has worked in favour of students under this category, barring one exception. Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was admitting more OBC students under its inclusive education policy till it introduced reservation last year. JNU was the first education institution to set its own ‘Backwardness Regional Index’ and the aim was to maintain proper representation of students from different sections of society.
Launched in 1972-73, the system gave extra points to students coming from smaller towns, OBC applicants, female candidates, disabled and SC/ST students. “The university has been running the scheme of giving extra points to those belonging to economically backward and lesser developed regions of the country. Under this scheme, we used to admit almost 23% OBC students every year. But under the reservation policy we put a cap of 12% OBC quota last year. This year a further 6% quota will be added,¶ informed Ramadhikari Kumar, rector, JNU.
Hence, a total number of reserved seats for the OBC candidates would go up to 18% this admission season. However, 18% is still lesser than the original number of OBC candidates admitted prior to the reservation policy. Only in the next admission season that a complete 27% reservation for OBC candidates would be implemented.
“No OBC candidate would be admitted under the inclusive admission policy. There are only two ways in which OBC candidates could secure a seat in JNU now. One is under the unreserved category — if they get the desired cut-off as any other general category student. If they secure marks below the cut-off, the university would give extra 10 points to reach the desired cut-off,¶ Kumar said. No OBC candidate would be admitted if he/she does not reach the cut-off even after securing 10 extra points. All other candidates, according to Kumar, such as girls, Kashmiri migrants, etc, would get extra points under the inclusive admission policy. “All girls irrespective of their class and social background get extra 5 points,¶ he said.
Ever since the Centre proposed the reservation policy, many institutes had felt that reservation would result in admitting poor quality students, hence, affecting the overall quality of education. JNU has admitted students from underprivileged sections of society for a long time now. What has been the university’s experience?
“People generally allege that students from backward areas cannot cope with the tough standards in higher education institutes. But JNU never felt this. The drop-out rate has been close to nil. These students find the course difficult in the first year. We run a language course to train these students in English as all the classes are held in English-medium. But by the following year they perform well,’’ Kumar said.
ADMISSION ALERT
JNU conducts, an entrance test for admission to various courses. The assessment for the entrance exam is over. The university will announce the cut-off list in the last week of June. This year the university received 96,298 applications for admission to various PhD, MPhil, Masters and Bachelors programmes. The university has increased its number of seats to 2274 this year as compared to 1600 seats last year. The increase in number of seats is due to the implementation of the OBC quota. As per SC’s directive there has to be a simultaneous increase in the number of seats for general category students. Though the university is trying to create required infrastructure, Ramadhikari Kumar, rector, JNU, feels accommodating all outside students in hostels is going to be a difficult. ¶We have constructed Koyana hostel that would accommodate 540 more girl students. But some of the students may have to stay on their own outside the university. We are constructing one more hostel but it would be completed only next year,¶ he said.
