Record B.Com cut-off at MSU triggers protest by students

Protests broke out at the Department of Commerce on Wednesday afternoon as members of the Congress’s student wing National Student Union of India (NSUI), All Gujarat Students’ Union (AGSU) and other student bodies joined to chant slogans against the university management. The unions have demanded an increase in the number of seats to accommodate the students who had been “left out” of the merit list.

NSUI President Amar Vaghela said, “This is for the first time in the history of the Faculty of Commerce that the cut off has been over 75 per cent as against about 60 per cent usually… Several students, especially those from Vadodara, have been left out. This has happened due to the GCAS… The faculty has always given out 70 per cent of the general category seats to local students. Our demand is that either the seats should be increased or the cutoff should be reduced to allow more local students to make it.”

The student unions also set on fire the memorandum that they had brought along to submit to the Vice Chancellor Vijay Kumar Srivastava.

The unions met Ketan R. Upadhyay, Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, and handed over a memorandum.  The Faculty had received over 12,000 applications for 5,638 seats, officials at the varsity said.

“This year, the cutoff has been higher due to a higher number of applications, which also includes applications from students of Vadodara. After the controversy over the quota for local students broke out, it was only the Faculty of Commerce in the varsity that had the practice of 70 per cent quota for local students and the current provisional merit list has been made in accordance with the practice… The students who have made it to the provisional merit list will now have their documents verified for the confirmation of admission.”

Professor Hitesh Ravaiya, officer on special duty and PRO, told this newspaper that all departments of the MSU received a much higher number of applications than the intake capacity.

Ravaiya said, “All faculties– Commerce, Arts and Science — have received up to six times more applications than the intake capacity while courses like Bachelors of Business Administration and Bachelors’ of Science received 25 per cent more applications. All the faculties have completed the process of admission and sent the respective provisional merit lists to the MSU Registrar and GCAS. These lists will be available to students on Thursday. While many universities have not received enough applications for the intake capacity, MSU is the only University to receive surplus applications through the GCAS portal. We are confident that this time the seats for courses in Arts and Science will also be filled up in the first round. There is an increase in the number of students from North East, who prefer MSU as Vadodara is a safe city…”

Officials of the MSU said that the university, however, will follow the existing rule of preferring its own undergraduate students for admissions to masters  courses, for which the deadline for application of GCAS is June 12.

“MSU has always believed in merit and excellence can only be achieved through merit. So, apart from the Commerce Faculty, all other Faculty Deans have always given admissions based on merit and not local quota. It will be implemented this year too. Only in the case of admissions to masters courses, we do prefer students who have graduated from MSU as it is a fair process to have in-house students have the first right as per merit,” an official said.

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