Vacant OBC seats available for all

July 12, 2009: The Times of India

New Delhi: While only a day is left before the admissions against the fourth list close in Delhi University, a lot of OBC seats are still vacant in many colleges. It’s good news for the students of other categories. Those who haven’t yet found a seat in DU may get another chance as the colleges will transfer the vacant OBC seats to the general and other categories after admission process for 2009-10 session ends on August 16. 

G u r p re e t Singh Tuteja, deputy dean, students’ welfare at DU, said, ‘‘The vacant OBC seats will be open to all eligible candidates. Last year, the Supreme Court order in this regard had come in September due to which we could not start the admissions again. But it’s going to happen this time. The modalities for transferring the seats is yet to be worked out.’’ 

In fact, some colleges may remove the demarcation between OBC and general category and further relax cut-offs right after closing the admissions on Monday to wrap up the process before new session begins on July 16. S K Garg, principal, Deen Dayal Upadhyay College, said, ‘‘We had filled 88 OBC seats out 142 by Saturday. We will open the vacant seats right away by further relaxing the cut-offs for the general and OBC categories. Any eligible candidate will be granted admission.’’ 

According to DU officials, nearly 50% seats reserved for the OBC students had remained vacant last year. Though the turnout for admission has been better this year, colleges still expect some seats to remain vacant. Interestingly, DU received over 16,000 applications for 10,183 OBC seats this year. But colleges say not enough candidates finally turned up as they either did not figure on the central OBC list or they did not belong to the non-creamy layer. High cut-offs could have been another deterrent. 

At Gargi College, nearly 30 seats are still vacant under the OBC category. ‘‘I don’t expect all the seats to be full by Monday. We have already given the maximum relaxation of 10% in the cut-offs to the OBC candidates,’’ said principal Meera Ramachandran.