IITs directors meet on OBC quota in Delhi

New Delhi, Apr 16: Directors of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will meet here today to chalk out a strategy to implement 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The meeting of the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) chairman and others from the board of the JEE is also scheduled to be held today.

Issues like enhancement of infrastructure and other facilities to increase the intake of the students, and how to fix the cut-off marks of the entrance test to accommodate the OBC students are expected to be discussed during the meeting. Presently, there are about 4,000 seats in IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Guwahati and Roorkee. The increase in number of seats could go up to 5,000 this year to implement the OBC quota.

On April 10, the Supreme Court had upheld the Government's decision of 27 per cent quota for OBCs in higher educational institutions, while pronouncing its verdict on the constitutional validity of the controversial law.

The apex court had decided that the Central Government was legally right to provide OBC quotas in higher educational institutions like the IITs, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS).

The apex court, however, had asked the Government to exclude the creamy layer from the reservation quota.

The court had also asked the Government to include children of MPs and MLAs in the creamy layer, thereby excluding them from the quota.

The new policy, if implemented, would take the overall reservation in the Government-funded higher education institutions from the current 22.5 (for SC and ST students) to 49.5 per cent.

ANI