FYJC controversy: Open-category seats at minority institutions fall sharply as SC/ST/OBC quotas get added

“If admissions are lower than the intake capacity in minority quota, admissions can be given as per interchanging between linguistic and religious minority groups. Even after that, if seats remain vacant, those surrendered vacant seats will be filled based on the centralised admission process where all social and parallel reservations are applicable,” the GR states.

As per the established practice, 45 per cent of the total intake in minority institutions is kept open to all students, irrespective of category, after reserving 50 per cent for the particular minority, and 5 per cent for management quota. However, this year, the admission portal is reflecting only around 14 per cent of such open seats, senior officials at several minority institutions said.

This has sparked widespread confusion among junior colleges run by minority institutions, as they say the Supreme Court has explicitly prohibited such reservation in minority institutions, as it would increase the number of quota seats to beyond 80 per cent. Authorities at the minority colleges are also irked that there was no clear communication on the change, as most of them only noticed it on the admission portal.

According to sources, the May 6 GR effectively means that constitutional reservation will apply to seats left vacant in the minority quota. “But nowhere does the document mention that the state has decided to implement the constitutional reservation to 45 per cent seats in minority quota, which were until now open for all to be filled only on the basis of merit,” the principal of a minority trust-run college said, adding that there was no discussion or meeting in this regard.

However, the government official insisted that though the particular sentence in the GR pertains to leftover seats under the minority quota, “it is implied here that the other remaining seats will see application of reservation”.

“That is the point of conducting centralised admission process so that the system is the same in all colleges. There should not be any confusion over this,” the official added.

Emphasizing that this will leave hardly any seats for candidates coming from open category, principal from another minority run college said, “Percentage of reservation under SC/ST/OBC combined can go over 30 percent, then there is 50 percent already reserved for minority and five percent of seats going to management quota. This essentially means reservation on over 85 percent of seats.”