Jr colleges have free hand to fill minority quota

The minority quota First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions are conducted by respective colleges without any interference from the state education department. While some junior colleges admit students based on a merit list, others have fixed cut off percentage and few colleges decided on walk-in admissions for the minority students without any percentage consideration.

Dates for declaring the minority lists is also decided by the respective colleges.

Each junior college decides how to fill the 50 per cent seats reserved for the minority students and the state education department has no say over these admissions. For example, R.D. National College at Bandra (West) has walk-in admissions without any percentage barrier. This means any student belonging to the minority community can walk in and secure admissions irrespective of the percentage scored.

The aim of the college is to fill the seats no matter the percentage scored as they have to submit the seats to the state education department. Vivek Mahajan, Vice Principal of the junior college, said, “We have to give first preference to the minority students, so we do not want them to go through the hassle of applying online. We do not want the minority students to take the tension of high merit, so we just accept whoever applies.”

Few colleges have a standard percentage, so any applicant who has scored above that can secure admission. A senior official of Jai Hind College said, “This year we admitted all the minority applicants who scored above 60 per cent for both science and Arts. This percentage will further decrease if we have vacant seats. While in the open category, the cut off is much higher, generally above 85 per cent.”

Some colleges have a separate merit list for minority quota students like NM college. Parag Ajagaonkar, Principal of the college, said, “We opened the first minority merit list at 99 per cent and closed it at 90 per cent. The application process was entirely online and we did not accept any offline minority admission.”

A senior official at St Xavier’s College said, “Some students fake caste certificates for securing seats in the minority quota as the cut off percentage is low. So now, we have taken necessary precautions.”

The cut off percentage for minority quota admissions are considerably low as compared to the open category which is one of the reasons for faking the certificate.

Students in the second merit list have to visit the respective college to submit all necessary documents and pay the fees for the particular course by July 1. Third and final merit list will be out on July 1 at 5 pm.