Full OBC quota in IISc

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has implemented fully the Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota for Masters courses this year.

Thus, one of the country’s leading research institutions has met the deadline - 2010 was the cut-off year for implementing the full 27 percent quota for all Central government institutes.

According to information made available to the IISc Council, 588 regular admissions were made to ME, MTech, and MDes courses this year.

Of these, 294 or nearly half the admissions were made in the general category, 150 (26 pc) to the OBC category, 88 (15 pc) to the Scheduled Castes category and 43 (7.3 pc) to the Scheduled Tribes quota.

As per the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, Institutes were to implement, beginning 2008, 7.5 pc, 17 pc, and 27 pc of OBC quota in successive years. In 2008, IISc was only able to fill half of the OBC quota seats.

Following changes to the admission procedure, IISc was able to implement the OBC quota better in 2009, with almost all seats under the quota being filled.

Besides the admissions, an additional 49 students have also been admitted by IISc to the ME/MTech programme. These include 5 candidates sponsored by the state transport corporations KSRTC and BMTC.

However, the Institute is yet to implement the OBC quota for PhD students. Of the 467 PhD students admitted this year, 431 students belonged to the general category, while 33 were SC and 3 belonged to ST.

While the 2006 Act mandates the implementation of OBC quota for PhD students, IISc, along with most of the IITs and IIMs is yet to meet the requirement. In 2009, IISc wrote to Union HRD Ministry to exclude the Institute from implementing the OBC quota for PhD students.

In the letter, IISc sought exemption under Section 4(b) of the 2006 Act whereby institutes of excellence, research institutions, and institutions of national and strategic importance are exempted from implementing the OBC quota.

Currently, eight institutes are exempt from implementing the quota, which includes the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research.