With the supreme court saying that eligibility percentage for obc candiates under 27 per cent quota in central universities would be at most 10 per cent less than general cetegory students,Delhi Universitys officials said on Friday that its recent notification on OBC admission is in conformity with the Supreme Court judgement. The University will go ahead with the same for the next year to make all efforts to facilitate admissions well within the stipulated time. We are waiting for a copy of the order. We will follow the order and admissions will be completed well on time, Vice Chancellor Dr. Dinesh Singh said. Vice Chancellor,J N U,S K Sopory echoed similar sentiments and said,We have been following the Delhi High Court judgement in this regard and the Supreme Court has only upheld it. In the notification preceding the tenth cutoff for OBC admissions which was released on August 17,the DU had taken away the ten percent ceiling on relaxation in cutoffs for OBC candidates and also asked colleges to give ten percent relaxation in additonal elgibility criteria and the minimum eligibilty criteria. Student and teacher bodies which have been leading protests against alleged inadequacies in the DUs OBC admissions system have demanded that the University make significant changes in the present system of OBC admissions which has led to admissions to the reserved category going on nearly a month into classes and approach the OBC admissions the same way it handles other reserved category admissions. The University should either go for centralised admission to OBC seats,or invite application from students to fill the quota seats and allow colleges to short list students based on merit and admit them. Inviting applications and shortlisting will take more time but it is better than going in for ten cutoffs and more, said Dr. Hany Babu a professor in the Department of English at DU and Secretary of Academic Forum for Social Justice,an organisation of DU teachers. The University has abrogated its responsibility in OBC admissions saying that colleges are autonomous. The University should approach OBC admissions the same way it handles SC/ST admissions and,or,give strong guidelines to colleges asking them to reduce cutoffs for OBC students early enough in the admission process, said Sunny Kumar of the Delhi University wing of the All India Students Association. SC/ST admissions,currently carried out by DU in a centralised manner,however are also fraught with problems,with students alleging that the allocation process is far from perfect.
