BE happy: Quota for the poor stays

The Union ministry for human resource development (MHRD) has directed all technical institutes across the country to provide 5% reservation for meritorious students from economically backward families.

The decision comes close on the heels of the state government’s move to remove the quota, reserved for poor meritorious students, in undergraduate engineering colleges through Common Entrance Test.

This is one of the major issues which were included in the revised All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) norms. HRD minister Kapil Sibal had recently announced this and said all technical institutes approved by the AICTE will reserve 5% seats for these students.

Till now, the tuition fee waiver scheme had been operated by the AICTE which allowed providing up to 10% extra seats that were given to economically unprivileged students. However, from now on, under the scheme individual institutes should provide the facility.

Earlier, the decision to apply for the fee waiver scheme was with the institutes, but the new norms makes it is mandatory for each of them approved by the AICTE to reserve up to 5% seats for economically poor backward students.

According to officials from AICTE, institutes need not get approval for that 5% quota. Reacting to this, KN Balasubramanya Murthy, principal and director of PESIT said, “This is a new norm under the tuition fee waiver scheme. But we don’t need to get approval from AICTE for that 5% reservation. So, it won’t be a burden on the institutes.”

Meanwhile, colleges will not collect any fee from the students who get seats under this quota. “Issues like filling the seats and choosing the students are not yet clear. We are thinking of filling the seats through Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA),” said a chairman of another institute in the city.

“Up to 2010, the tuition fee waiver scheme operated by AICTE allowed for providing 10% supernumerary seats that are given to students of economically backward category. These seats were provided for institutions which may apply for such a scheme. Now, these are made mandatory for every institute up to 5%,” he said.