OBCS TO GET 27% QUOTA IN MED SEATS, EWS 10%

In a major political move, the Centre on Thursday announced a quota for the Other Backward Communities (OBC) and the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) in the All-India Quota (AIQ) scheme for undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses from the 2021-22 academic year onwards. The decision will allow OBC and EWS students from across the country to compete for seats in any state via AIQ. The communities listed in the Central List of OBCs shall be eligible for this reservation.

Terming it as a “historic and a landmark decision”, health minister Mansukh Mandaviya said the Centre said this decision will benefit every year nearly 1,500 OBC students in MBBS and 2,500 OBC students in postgraduation courses, and around 550 EWS students in MBBS and around 1,000 EWS students in postgraduation courses.

Officials said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a meeting on Monday, had directed the concerned ministries to facilitate an effective solution to this long-pending issue.

The All-India Quota (AIQ) Scheme was introduced in 1986 under the directions of the Supreme Court to provide for domicile-free merit-based opportunities to students from any state to aspire to study in a good medical college located in another state. The All-India Quota consists of 15 per cent of the total available UG seats and

50 per cent of the total available PG seats in government medical colleges. Initially, there was no reservation in the AIQ Scheme up to 2007.

In 2007, the Supreme Court had introduced reservation of

15 per cent for SCs and 7.5 per cent for STs in the AIQ Scheme. When the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act became law in

2007, providing for a uniform

27 per cent reservation to OBCs, the same was implemented in all Central educational institutions – such as Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital and Lady Hardinge Medical College, as well as in places like Aligarh Muslim University and Banaras Hindu University. However, this was not extended to the AIQ seats of state medical and dental colleges.

“The decision is the reflection of the government’s commitment to provide due reservation for backward classes and EWS category students. This is also in sync with the significant reforms carried out in the field of medical education since 2014. In the last six years, MBBS seats in the country have increased by 56 per cent from 54,348 seats in 2014 to

84,649 seats in 2020, and the number of PG seats have gone up by 80 per cent — from 30,191 seats in 2014 to 54,275 seats in

2020. In the same period, 179 new medical colleges have been established and now the country has 558 (government:

289; private: 269) medical colleges,” the Union government said in a statement.

IN 2007, the Supreme Court had introduced reservation of 15 per cent for SCs and 7.5 per cent for STs in the AIQ Scheme.