With a tailor-made admission procedure in place,the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has managed to fill only 14.2 per cent of its 18 per cent seats reserved for Other Backward Classes (OBC) for the academic year 2009-10. Responding to an RTI query,the university said it had transferred 83 of the 413 available OBC seats to general category after eligible OBC candidates were not found. The data available with Newsline,however,suggests the vacancy was not caused by the absence of suitable OBC candidates,but due to the OBC admission policy designed by the University. Data for 138 of the 413 OBC seats on offer was compiled by a group of JNU students,who filed a series of RTI applications in order to obtain admission details. As per the procured data,the university has put in place two criteria for the selection of OBC students: a cut-off mark fixed at 10 marks below the score secured by the last selected general category student and a qualifying mark,which is the minimum eligibility mark acquired in the entrance exam,recommended by the Aditya Mukherjee Committee in 2009. While the university follows the qualifying mark system for SC/ST students,both conditions are being followed for OBC admissions,the figures show. In MA Economics,the total number of seats was 123,with 22 seats reserved for OBCs. The marks scored by the last selected general category candidate in the entrance exam for the course was 73,and the cut-off for OBC candidates was fixed at 63. Thereafter,the administration admitted OBC candidates who scored between 63 and 72. The administration could find only three such candidates. With the qualifying mark condition in place,to be considered for admission to MA Economics,a general candidate needs to score 30,an OBC candidate must score 27,and a SC/ST candidate 25. If the administration were to consider 27 per cent as the cut-off instead of 63,it would have found 79 eligible OBC candidates,according to the data. The April 20,2008,MHRD directive asked Central Educational Institutions to fix cut-off marks for admission/selection through (an) admission test,etc for OBC candidates with such differential cut-off marks for unreserved category. S Chandrasekaran,JNU coordinator of admission,said: There are different interpretations of what the cut-off can be. The JNU Academic Council has gone by the recommendation of the Aditya Mukherjee Committee,believing OBC students should not lag behind general students. At the same time,the university does not believe that it has a perfect system,and the committee has been asked to go through its recommendations once again.
