IIMs likely to defer admissions to make space for OBCs

Supreme Court ruling on OBC quotas: educational institutions ready to live with it...

The institutes had not accounted for exclusion of the 'creamy layer'.

The Supreme Court order upholding the 27 per cent quota for other backward classes (OBCs) in institutes of higher learning has thrown the admission process of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) out of gear. The IIMs were set to release the final list of candidates tomorrow. The process, however, could be deferred by at least a week.

Now, 49.5 per cent seats in institutes of higher learning would be reserved. Of this, scheduled castes (SCs - 15 per cent) and scheduled tribes (STs -- 7.5 per cent) enjoy 22.5 per cent reservation while the OBCs' share is 27 per cent. This implies that the premier management institutes will have to accommodate students over and above the numbers they have been admitting so far.

The IIMs prepared two admission lists to account for the Supreme Court verdict but had not bargained for exclusion of the "creamy layer."

"We interviewed some OBC students but did not take into consideration their family background," said an official of IIM-Bangalore. IIM-Ahmedabad had prepared a final list of 250 students and is expected to add 17 seats for OBCs. IIM-Bangalore admitted 251 students and would add 19 OBC students to the list.

The decision will also impact 20 central universities and colleges supported by the government. However, unaided private institutions and those run by the minorities will not be affected as the court has asked the government to review the 27 per cent quota after five years.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), on their part, are awaiting a directive from the human resource development (HRD) ministry. The IITs were to receive Rs 100 crore each from the government for increasing the number of seats in first year.

However, IIT-Kharagpur is investing Rs 400 crore on infrastructure to double its student and faculty intake and to scale up its academic programmes.The institute has at present 7,000 students and 500 faculty members.

"It is too early to say anything. Although we are prepared for some increase in the student intake, the exact number can be known only after some time," said Surendra Prasad, director, IIT-Delhi. "I am yet to get the exact number of current and revised seats. I will find it soon," he added.

The IITs have been facing a severe resource crunch and using their corpus money to expand.

Now, with the OBC quota, these premier institutes will need to expand infrastructure and add faculty members. Each IIT is short of at least 100 faculty members.

The faculty-student ratio in the IITs is around 1:10 and the institutes plan to bring this down to around 1:9. They have requested the HRD ministry to allow them to increase the fee for the engineering programmes.