Moily to head quota panel

Veerappa Moily, chairman of the Administrative Reforms Commission, will head the Oversight Committee that will prepare the roadmap to address the issue of reservation in central educational institutes, it was announced here today.

The decision to set up the Oversight Committee was taken at the meeting of the UPA Coordination Committee on May 23.

It was mandated to draw up a time-bound roadmap for implementing the decisions of the Coordination Committee. It was also then decided that smaller groups consisting of deans, directors and vice chancellors of the institutions concerned will be set up to work out details for each class of institutions.

The Oversight Committee will put together the recommendations of these groups and submit a comprehensive report by August 31 this year.

Emerging from a 90-minute meeting presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his official residence, Union Minister Oscar Fernandes told reporters that the agitating medicos had sought certain clarifications on the statement issued by the PMO after their meeting with Singh last week.

The meeting was attended, among others, by the prime minister's Principal Secretary TKA Nair and Health Secretary P K Hota.

Fernandes said he would meet the students to address the apprehensions nursed by the medicos. "We will try to clarify all the points they have raised", Fernandes said.

Asked about the details of the sub-committees, he said there would be four to five sub-committees on various subjects with experts and department secretaries and others as members.

The PMO today also promised to look into the demands of students agitating against the proposed quota and to give an assurance on their demands in writing.

On the other hand, pro-reservation students, who are fast consolidating their position, threatened to take to the streets if the government acquiesced to the demands of the anti-quota lobby.

The pro-quota students in Delhi are to open a website tomorrow which will integrate all interests favouring uplift of the backward castes and Dalits.

Students agitating against reservation said they had long meetings all day with a Central Government team led by Oscar Fernandes and comprising T K A Nair, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Health Secretary P K Hota.

"The PM will look into our demands for a non-political committee to study the implications of reservation and to come up with a decision that will not interfere with the development of the country," student leader Dr Binod Patra said today.

However, the pro-reservation students have said that the proposed committee's terms imply that quota and uplift of Dalits would hinder the development of the country.

According to activists in the pro-quota camps, meetings were held with Congress President Sonia Gandhi regarding the website which is being tentatively called Equality for Equals.

However, the students were advised to go slow on their demands as the government was already addressing them.

On the other hand, students of Youth for Equality have distanced themselves from the twin immolation attempts that took place yesterday, saying they had nothing to do with the anti-quota agitation.

Several students from Jawaharlal Nehru University today joined the ongoing pro-reservation vigil in the foyer of AIIMS.

In the anti-quota camps, some IIT students are likely to join the indefinite hunger strike, according to student leaders.

In Mumbai, an anti-reservation rally will be held in Azad Maidan. Lawyers, chartered accountants, film makers and businessmen have also decided to join the anti-reservation protests led by the city's medicos and IIT students.

In Bangalore, medical, engineering, IT professionals, IIT and IIM alumni and students took part in a rally today.

Meanwhile, the Union health ministry has asked AIIMS to immediately increase undergraduate seats from 50 to 90. Eight other centrally-owned medical institutions have also been asked to increase seats.

These are PGI, Chandigarh, Lady Hardinge, RML, Safdarjung, JIPMER, NEIGRIMS (North Eastern Indira Gandhi Institute Of Research In Medical Sciences), Shillong, NIMHANS, Bangalore, and Central Institute of Psychiatry, Ranchi.

For PG courses, the seats will be increased between 55-60 per cent. For PGI Chandigarh, apart from an increase in the PG seats, the government has allowed it to start an undergraduate course as well.