Kudos MHRD!!! State quotas abolished in AIEEE !

Common sense has finally prevailed in the Ministry of Human Resource & Development. Just when I thought caste based reservation and electoral politics was the mainstay of Sir Arjun singh and Co., they did something surreal.

For the record, prior to this year 50% of the seats in every National Institute Of Technology(NIT) were reserved for the candidates from the state in which the NIT is located. The left over 50% will have a state quota so that every state in the country would be duly represented in the campus. The number of seats for different states was based on quite a few factors like the nearness of that state with the state where the NIT is, the population of the state et al. So here in NITJ we ended up with 140 seats for Jharkhand, around 25 for UP, around 20 for Bihar, 8 for the entire North-East, 1 for Goa, 1 for Sikkim and so on(in our times in 2k5). Total number of seats was escalated considerably in 2k6 and so were the number of seats for the respective states. This – I’ll admit it quite unabashedly – created a upset in terms of the All India Ranks (AIRs) among the students. The pangs of fortune tilted towards the so-called “backward” states whose students managed to lock a seat by achieving an AIR even ten times of students from the states where there is ferocious competition for an engineering seat in a reputed institute for example, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh , Rajasthan and most importantly, Andhra Pradesh, the most awful sufferer. The irregularity can be best gauged on learning that the solitary seat in NITJ for Mizoram remained vacant for three years (2k3 to 2k5) as the total number of seats allotted to Mizoram in different NITs outnumbered the total number of eligible candidates from the state!!! Contrast this with the thousands of aspirants from the above mentioned states who haplessly watch the guys from the “backward” states grabbing the seats with both hands.

According to the new concept, come AIEEE Counselling 2008, 50% reservation for the home state is kept untouched. But as a rare welcome development, the remaining half would be filled up solely on the basis of AIRs. This would help in shipshaping the skewed balance and create an atmosphere of people with just about the same AIRs as in the prestigious IITs.

Students hailing from the “backward” states, hitherto benefited from the system, would have a rough time rubbing their eyes on reading similar chunks of dream-shattering news. But re-emphasizing, the development would, no doubt, address the admission irregularities.

This was not expected at all, to say the least. But one needs to thump the back of
the officials from MHRD for such a wonderful step. Bravo!

TOI: :http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/HRD_ministry_abolishes_state_quota_in_AIEEE/articleshow/3139314.cms