3 oversight panel groups submit reports

Three of the five expert groups set up under the Oversight Committee to recommend a road map for OBC reservations in higher education have submitted their reports.

These groups were formed to look into the increase in seats of medical colleges, agricultural colleges and central universities to accommodate the 27 per cent OBC reservation proposed by the Centre.

The groups formed to give inputs regarding the requirements of IITs and IIMs are yet to submit their reports, Committee chairman Veerappa Moily said today.

He said the mandate of these groups was to give inputs regarding the requirements in terms of seats, faculty and infrastructure so that advance action could be taken to implement the OBC reservations in the academic year 2007-08.

The reports have to come by June 30 and an interim report based on these would be made by the latter part of July, he said, adding that the expansion in seats or infrastructure or faculty would be done on the basis of this report.

Moily said he or the committee had nothing to do with the OBC quota Bill of the Human Resource Development Ministry.

"The Bill has not been referred to us. And I have not seen the Bill," he said.

"The inputs and findings of the committee will belong to the government which can use it the way it likes. Our mandate ends with providing the inputs for what is required to implement the 27 per cent quota without affecting the general category seats," Moily said.