NEW DELHI: The Government on Monday set up a 13-member Oversight Committee to monitor the implementation of reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in higher educational institutions. Also, three separate groups have been set up to draw up the modalities for implementing the decision in engineering and management institutions besides Central universities.

To be headed by Administrative Reforms Commission Chairman Veerappa Moily, the committee has as its members Planning Commission member B. Mungekar, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Director-General R. Mashelkar, University Grants Commission Chairman Sukhadeo K. Thorat, the former Vice-Chancellor of National Law School of India (Bangalore), G. Mohan Gopal, All-India Council for Technical Education Vice-Chairman R.A. Yadav, Indian Council of Medical Research Director-General N.K. Ganguly and former Union Secretary R.V.V. Ayyar.

Besides, the Secretaries to the Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and Departments of Secondary and Higher Education, Agricultural Research & Education, and Expenditure will be ex-officio members of the committee while Planning Commission Member-Secretary R.R. Shah will serve as its Member-Secretary also.

The Oversight Committee has been asked to submit its report by August 31 so that the reservation policy can be implemented in time for the next academic session, as the admission process in institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Management for 2007-08 will begin in the last quarter of this year itself. Besides monitoring the implementation of 27 per cent reservation for OBCs, the committee will also have to assess the additional infrastructure and other requirements for increasing the overall availability of seats.

For the committee to wrap up its work by August 31, the three expert groups have been asked to complete their job by July 31. The group for engineering institutions will be headed by the former Vice-Chancellor of Anna University, M. Anandakrishnan. Directors of two IITs Sanjay Dhande (Kanpur) and S.K. Dube (Kharagpur), Director of Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing (Jabalpur) Sanjeev Bhargava, Directors of two National Institutes of Technology R.P. Dahiya (Jaipur) and Y.V. Rao (Warangal), Associate Director of Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore) N. Balakrishnan, Dean of the Saharanpur campus of IIT Roorkee I.M. Mishra, and National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) professor Indira Rajaraman will be its other members.

The group for management institutions will be headed by IIM (Bangalore) Director Samuel Paul and will have as its members four other IIM Directors, Bakul Dholakia (Ahmedabad), Krishna Kumar (Kozhikode), Shekhar Chaudhury (Kolkata) and Devi Singh (Lucknow), besides National Institute of Industrial Engineering (Mumbai) Director S.D. Awale.

The group for Central universities will be headed by former Aligarh Muslim University Vice-Chancellor Sayed Hamid. Other members are Vice-Chancellors of four Central universities — Panjab Singh (Banaras Hindu University), Deepak Pental (Delhi University), Pramod Tandon (North-Eastern Hill University), Syed E. Hasnain (Hyderabad University) — and NIPFP professor M. Govinda Rao.

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