DU to colleges: Bring down OBC cut-offs

During the meeting,which took place at the Viceregal Lodge,Singh also assured them that DU will start teaching all its courses in the semester mode from the next academic session. The V-C has assured that the syllabi for all courses — including BA (Hons) History — will be ready in 14 days.

The university reserves 27 per cent of its seats for OBC candidates. Colleges publish the cut-offs for OBC candidates along with that for unreserved category students. The difference between the cut-off marks for unreserved and OBC category cannot be more than 10 per cent.

Singh has now instructed that colleges reduce the OBC cut-offs up to 10 per cent before closing admissions. His observation comes from an observation made in 2010,when some colleges did not maintain a difference of 10 per cent and closed admissions even though they had vacant OBC seats.

The V-C also asked the principals to apply the relaxation when offering vacant OBC seats to unreserved category candidates.

After all the cut-off lists are published,colleges will be allowed to grant OBC seats to all candidates. This year,the notification will be made on July 15,and admissions to these converted seats will go on till July 23.

Usually,colleges bring down the cut-off marks only of unreserved category candidates when converting vacant OBC seats. This results in no OBC student getting admitted against the converted seats.

The V-C has asked principals to reduce cut-off marks for OBC students in proportion to the reduction in cut-offs for the unreserved category. For example,if a college reduces the cut-off marks for BCom (Hons) in the unreserved category from 70 to 69 to convert OBC seats,it will also have to reduce OBC cut-offs by a mark,from 60 to 59.

Singh also assured principals that the semester system will be in place for all courses by the next academic session. He told the principals that he would soon convene a meeting of the academic council to approve revised courses.

The principals were also given a glimpse of the proposed structure of the semester system. They were assured that the workload of teachers will neither increase nor decrease,and would be given the freedom to decide on the number of tutorials.

Principals were told that languages will be taught in the first two semesters: qualifying in the first,and credit language in the second semester. The interdisciplinary papers would be included in the third semester,and discipline-centered concurrent papers in the fourth and fifth semesters.