IIM-A alumni for national consensus on quota, to meet President

Ahmedabad, May 18 (UNI) Expressing concern at the vexed issue of reservation for Other Backward Castes (OBC), several alumni of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIMA) today called for a national consensus on the issue, saying it is should not be based on ''one person's whim''.

The executive committee of the Ahmedabad chapter of IIMA Alumni Association, which met here to make arrangements for the next general meeting, discussed pros and cons of the issue, including meeting Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President A P J Abdul Kalam.

Briefing reporters later, Mr Aman Dhruv said: ''We are hopeful that good sense prevails over the GoM.'' He said that reservation was not in the day's agenda, but looking at the developments at the Centre, several members expressed their individual opinions at the execuive meeting on the issue.

Mr Dhruv said ''It is not just adding chairs and tables. One has to create infrastructure and faculty. The nation has to first find solution and then the method to implement it. It cannot be done overnight in a quickfix manner.'' The backward classes deserve a better deal, it should begin from schools to undergraduate and then postgraduate colleges and last in specialised institutions of higher learning like IITs and IIMs, he added.

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