Held On : 13 August 2009 at 11 AM
Tagore Hall, Arts Faculty, University of Delhi, North Campus
Speakers:
Prof. Vivek Kumar, School of Social Sciences, JNU
Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty, Retd. from Department of political Science, DU
Prof. Sushma Yadav, Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi
Shri Ravindra Goel, Satyavati College, DU
And others

University Community  (A group of teachers and Students of the University of Delhi)
Contact:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
FORUM FOR DEMOCRATIC STRUGGLE
And
DELHI UNIVERSITY RESERVATION EXECUTION COMMITTEE (DUREC)

 
Dear friends,
Gross injustice has been meted out to the students belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) aspiring for admission to various programmes run by the University of Delhi this academic year. The University admission process in the previous two months of this academic session effectively rendered the constitutional provision of reservation to the OBC category students. The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act is blatantly violated by the University.
 
It is quite distressing to note that many seats reserved for the OBC category are lying vacant in spite of there being a large number of applicants. This unfortunate scenario is the result of the restriction imposed on the relaxation in the cut-off marks for OBC candidates to only 10% of that of the candidates in the general category.  A large number of OBC students do not have enough marks to get through this 10% cut-off though they may even have a high first class in their qualifying examination. Hence they are not able to make use of reservations. This is in spite of the fact that the Office Memorandum issued to the Central Educational Institutions regarding the implementation of OBC reservation clearly asks the Central institutions to see to it that they ensure that “sufficient number of eligible OBC candidates are available in keeping with the directions / observations of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India” .
 
The present limit (of 10%) on the cut-off marks was decided quite arbitrarily by a judgment of the Apex court in 2008, without gathering any kind of empirical data that justifies this decision. In fact the verdict of the Supreme Court is quite ambiguous and vulnerable to various interpretations. It is this hasty decision that is now preventing many OBC students from entering higher educational institutions. However, the Supreme Court verdict is only a recommendation and not an order.
 
The University has decided to allow candidates from the general category to fill up the OBC reservation seats lying vacant. This process is set to begin after August 16, which is the last date for the OBC admissions.  This conversion of reserved seats meant for the OBC category students to the general category is in contradistinction to the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 that emanates from the principles of social justice and affirmative action enshrined in our Constitution.  In fact, many colleges have already admitted more number of students in the general category anticipating that OBC seats will lie vacant and the surplus number of general category students can be accommodated there.
 
The policy of the University to admit candidates from the general category to the OBC reservation seats lying vacant is based on a wrong reading of the Supreme Court guidelines of 2008. The directive given by the Supreme Court of India to fill up reservation seats for the OBC category by eligible students from the general category was applicable only to the year 2008 as it is clearly mentioned that “the end of October 2008” is the deadline for this conversion. It is unfortunate that the University of Delhi is continuing to follow an earlier Order given by the Supreme Court for a specific year under specific circumstances.