MSU adds 1,400 BCom seats after massive stir and high-level meeting

Protesters complained of a decline in the quota for local students in the commerce faculty after Gujarat Common Admission Services (GCAS), the centralised online admission process, was introduced this year.

The decision also comes after Vadodara BJP MP Dr Hemang Joshi held a high-level meeting with BJP MLAs of Vadodara as well as the party’s leaders and the management of MSU, including Srivastava and Registrar Krishnakumar Chudasma, late night on Monday. Earlier on Monday, Joshi had also met state Minister for Higher and Technical Education, Rushikesh Patel, to discuss the ongoing agitations against MSU.

“We discussed the feasibility of the University and the interest of the students to ascertain how we can assimilate more students from Vadodara. As per our records, previously, 95 per cent students seeking admission in BCom in MSU were from Vadodara. But GCAS has been introduced and it works on a single-line merit list. We began considering how Vadodara can be given more seats — so we first decided to implement a 70 per cent quota for Vadodara and 30 per cent for outsiders,” said Srivastava Tuesday in his first media interaction after the controversy broke out.

“It raised questions on how we can accommodate the remaining 25 per cent of Vadodara students. We calculated the difference and it was about 1,400 students. So, after discussing the pros and cons, we took it as our moral responsibility to admit these students and so we are increasing the general category seats by 1,400. The other category quotas have already been accommodated. We will upload the merit list for an additional 1,400 students on the GCAS portal,” he added.

Allaying apprehensions regarding the process under GCAS, Srivastava said that the provisional merit list was a “common” one and several students from other cities were “unlikely” to confirm admission at MSU. “The provisional merit list on the GCAS portal is common and hence, there are names of students from other cities.

The merit list will be revised once the students from other cities do not confirm the admission, which is natural as they will get through to their local colleges, too. Students do not travel to other cities to pursue common courses like BCom. So, the admission probability is bright… In fact, we will already have many vacant seats from the current provisional merit list. We will have three rounds of admissions as per the availability of seats.”

He denied that the MSU had made a mistake by capping admissions to the Faculty of Commerce at the current 7,200, instead of about 12,000 students until a few years ago. “When we had to conduct admissions for 11,000-12,000 students, it was alright as long as they could be squeezed into classes with three or four students on one bench but conducting exams for such a huge number of students is not feasible. It meant that the Faculty of Commerce could conduct exams only when all other faculties had completed their exams and all the buildings in the campus were available to seat the 12,000 students — one on each bench. Evaluation was difficult for such a huge number of students and results were delayed, which caused other protests. We are now focussing on the quality teaching concept, which is the first right of a student. We are also seriously implementing the mandatory 75 per cent attendance system of the University Grants Commission.”

Srivastava also announced that the Faculty of Technology at MSU would admit 60 students into a new course of Computer Engineering from the coming academic year.