The Hindu : National : Only 20 OBC quota seats vacant in IITs: Centre

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Only 20 OBC quota seats vacant in IITs: Centre

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi: The Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court that only 20 out of 654 seats meant for the Other Backward Classes in the 13 Indian Institutes of Technology remained vacant. Of these, 11 were in the architecture/design course.

Also, only 47 seats meant for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes remained vacant in the six new IITs as no preparatory course could be held.

The Centre was responding to a petition by P.V. Indiresan, former Director, IIT-Madras, for a direction that 432 vacant seats in the SC/ST/OBC categories in the various IITs be filled by general category (GC) candidates.

A Constitution Bench comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices Arijit Pasayat, C.K. Thakker, R.V. Raveendran and Dalveer Bhandari had issued notice to the Centre on his petition.

Solicitor-General G.E. Vahanvati, appearing for the Centre, said the OBC quota judgment had been implemented properly and the government had accepted the principle that reserved seats should not remain vacant and should go to GC candidates. However, such seats could be filled only at the end of three years as the increase of 27 per cent seats in the OBC quota was staggered over a three-year period.

On filling vacant OBC seats by GC candidates, Mr. Vahanvati said it was left to the institutions concerned and the Jawaharlal Nehru University had filled 54 such seats, and only 29 remained vacant as GC candidates did not qualify. In the IITs, OBC candidates with a cut-off mark of 172 had been admitted and there was no question of reducing cut-off marks for the GC. The reduction of cut-off marks by 5-10 for the OBC was left to the discretion of the institution concerned.

Senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, appearing for the petitioner, questioned the Centre’s contention that the vacant OBC seats would go to the GC only after three years. Proper application would be filed in this regard for necessary relief.

Justice Arijit Pasayat told Mr. Vahanvati: “You [Centre] cannot keep the OBC seat vacant for three years. Not a single seat should go waste and it must go to the GC. Don’t allow the seats to remain vacant. That would be unproductive. Our anxiety is to ensure that OBC seats should not be kept blank.”

Mr. Vahanvati said: “We had sought particulars from the Delhi University, to which 70 colleges are affiliated, regarding the vacant OBC seats. We will inform the court as and when we get information.”

Prof. Indiresan said that despite the apex court judgment, it was clear that the IITs, the Delhi University and the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Human Resource Development Ministry were of the view that the vacant seats in the reserved quota would not revert automatically to be filled by students from the general category and that it would not be possible to further lower the cut-off marks to accommodate more OBC candidates.

The Bench posted the matter to October 14.

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