OBC reservation to cover all private institutes

Even private unaided technical institutes and medical colleges would come under the ambit of the new law, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 7, 2006, 19:54:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The 27 per cent OBC reservation may not be restricted only to Deemed Universities. Even private unaided technical institutes and medical colleges would come under the ambit of the new law, likely to be tabled in the winter session of the Parliament.

In the draft bill for 49.5 per cent reservation — 27 per cent for OBCs, 15 per cent for Scheduled Castes and 7.5 for Scheduled Tribes —in unaided higher educational institutes, the HRD ministry has covered all higher education private educational institutions under the ambit of the bill.

Academicians privy to the contents of the bill say, the institutes under All Indian Council for Technical Education and Medical Council of India would also have to follow the new reservation policy. “Many technical educational institutes are associated with affiliating universities and by this they will also come under the reservation regime,” a government official said.

They term the move as an attempt to bring private educational institutions under strict government control. The bill envisages to control admissions, fee structure and quality of education. For this, the bill proposed to constitute a regulator, who will also grade the institutes as per the facilities available.

Vesting of vast powers with the government has been resisted by Planning Commission Vice-Chairperson Montek Singh Aluwalia and Commerce Minister Kamal Nath in the GoM, source said.

They have instead suggested that the institutions should be allowed to voluntarily adopt one of the several models available for implementation of the law. Giving example of Karnataka, an official said, the state government and private educational institutions have worked out some models to implement reservation. The Karnataka model does not enforce strict fee regulations and admissions controls.

The HRD ministry officials, however, said that the issue was being discussed in the Group of Ministers headed by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukerjee. The ministry has started the consultation process with the institutes but only seven of the 60 Deemed Universities participated in the meeting. Now, the ministry is seeking views of the State governments on the issue.

The ministry has already introduced a bill for 27 per cent OBC reservation in the Parliament, which is now being discussed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on HRD. The committee would submit its report in the winter session of the Parliament.

Email : Chetan@hindustantimes.com

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.