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14% of '07 IIT entrants OBCs

14% of '07 IIT entrants OBCs

Author: Hemali Chhapia
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 5, 2007

Introduction: That Far Exceeds The 9% Reservation Proposed By Arjun For 2008

Mumbai: Here's something for both the pro-reservation and anti-reservation camps to chew on. A large chunk of students who made it to the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) this year is from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. Post-admission analysis at these prime institutions reveals that almost 14% of those from the general category are OBCs. This, when the Union human resource development ministry has plans to set aside 9% of seats for the OBCs in central institutions from the academic session beginning 2008.

Across the IITs, a total of 990 OBC students qualified from the open category. However, only 876 of them attended the counselling process and only 590 of them enrolled, for reasons ranging from not getting their choice of discipline to not being allotted the institute of their preference. Given that there are 4,295 seats in the open category, the percentage of OBC students is 13.74.

With the reservation policy still on hold, OBC students were considered on par with the open category students for admission purposes this year. The data collected by the IITs has something for both the anti- and pro-reservation camps to think about. "When there are so many OBC students who are doing well naturally, why set aside seats for them and demoralise them?'' asked an OBC student who joined IIT Bombay. On the other hand, the proreservationists declare that the fact that OBCs have done well even without any special treatment shows up the standard 'no merit' argument of anti-reservationists as false.

The last word will, of course, come from the apex court bench that meets on the issue of OBC reservation in central institutions on Tuesday. This year, when the IITs held their entrance test, the Joint Entrance Exam, there was no clarity on whether the central institutions would have to implement OBC reservations or not. The IITs had then asked students to declare in the examination hall whether they were OBCs or not. Of the 2.43 lakh students who took the JEE, 45,576 (18.75%) were OBCs.


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