KEY TAKEAWAYS

The government has announced a 25% seat increase to ensure that there is no reduction in number of open seats due to 10% EWS reservation. This has been done without a concrete promise to increase budgetary allocation for higher education.

A similar seat increase was done during OBC reservations under the UPA government. Although funding increased significantly, it has not been enough to ensure that quality of education was maintained.

Bulk of the funding came in plan-grants which do not take care of recurring expenses such as faculty salaries and running laboratories. Student-teacher ratio has come down in the last two years for which data is available.

Increasing more seats without adequate allocation could increase these problems even more.