Government instruction to institutions in wake of SC order

The Govt instructs all educational institutions to remove hindrances to ensure free mobility of students even as it started consultations with legal experts on future course of action to ensure implementation of 27 per cent OBC quota from the academic year 2007-08.

Updated on: Apr 24, 2007, 02:32:11 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government on Monday instructed all educational institutions to remove hindrances to ensure free mobility of students even as it started consultations with legal experts on future course of action to ensure implementation of 27 per cent OBC quota from the academic year 2007-08.

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) has earlier pointed out that delay in admissions can result in students with good score in CAT not getting admission in IIMs. Their fear was that many prospective candidates will take admissions in private B-schools, which charge high fee and also retain the original certificates, thus preventing them to migrate to IIMs later.

Following the March 29 Supreme Court order staying implementation of OBC quota, many educational institutions had “unrealistically” advanced the dates for joining the courses to restrict students from exercising options of joining other institutions at a later stage.

In wake of the fear expressed by IIMs, the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) issued circulars on Monday instructing the institutions to deduct only Rs 1,000 fee as processing fee of students opting out of any course. The remaining fee will have to be returned. The seats felt vacant due to migration will have to be filled by the candidates enlisted in the waiting list.

The government also instructed the institutions, including universities and deemed universities, not to deposit the original certificates of a student, thereby providing a chance to the student to apply for admission in other premier institutes like IIMs once the issue of OBC quota is settled. The government felt that institutions were trying to prevent students from seeking other options by retaining their original certificates.

The government has threatened punitive action including withdrawal of approval and recognition against the erring institutes.

The HRD ministry is also expected to issue new instructions to IIMs on admissions after its review petition was rejected by the Supreme Court. “Fresh instructions will be issued soon,” a top HRD ministry official said, while refusing to divulge any time frame. One options being looked into is seeking a review of the two bench order by a higher bench, officials said.

The ministry is also exploring other legal options available even as officials admitted that the court’s order was a “setback” to implement of OBC reservation. On March 29, the Supreme Court had stayed implementation of OBC quota in Central higher education institutions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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