Oversight panel for 600 additional medical seats

Just 600 extra medical seats at a cost of Rs 1,877 crore and restricted to mainly three medical colleges, two of them in Delhi, is the total expansion in medical education proposed in the final report of the Oversight Committee on higher education set up to put down a medical students' agitation against 27 quota in higher education.

The final report has not only ignored objections to phased implementation, but many of the institutes are struggling to implement expansion in the first two years. But at the end of it, the institutions have been projected as being the richer for the effort.

The IITs getting Rs 500 crore each and AIIMS about Rs 800 crore would be among the best in the world, the report says.

While all the IITs have adopted the uniform formula of 9 per cent expansion of both reserved and general category seats in three years beginning next year, IIMs are barely there.

IIM-Kolkata, for instance, provides just 3 per cent quota for OBCs next year, while IIM-Indore provides 4 per cent.

IIM-Ahmedabad is slightly better at 7 per cent in 2007-08, followed by 7 per cent in 2008-2009 and 14 per cent in 2009-10.

Similarly, IIM-Lucknow will begin its expansion with 8 per cent each for reserved and general categories in 2007-08 following it up with 10 per cent and 9 per cent in the following years.

The seven IITs will roll out quota at the rate of 9 per cent each for reserved and general categories in all the three years beginning 2007.

But money-wise, the institutes benefit from day one of the rollout. While the engineering institutions will get Rs 6,745 crore in the next five years, against an additional annual intake of 16,440 students, the additional grants to IITs will range between Rs 220 to 700 crore.