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Inhouse quota in junior colleges will only be available to students of schools run by the same management that are located on the “same premises”, states new guidelines for class 11 or First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions by the State Directorate of Education.
The information booklet published by the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education regarding the class 11 centralised online admission process says, “Students who have passed std. 10th from secondary school (within same premises) of the same management who run Junior Colleges are eligible for Inhouse quota admission in those Jr. Colleges.”
This will affect multiple educational institutes and trusts in the state that have inhouse quota systems. For example, the Deccan Education Society has multiple schools in Pune and students from these schools could avail the inhouse quota to get admission in Fergusson Junior College. However, these schools are not located on the same premises as the junior college, meaning that from this year, students from these schools will not be eligible for the quota.
Explaining the rationale behind the decision, Mahesh Palkar, Director of Secondary and Higher Education, told The Indian Express, “This time the admission process is completely online and any student can apply for a college anywhere in the state. It is expected that for inhouse quota the school and the junior college be in the same premises. If a junior college is in Colaba [Mumbai] and the same management has a school on the Karnataka border, and a student from that school applies for the Colaba junior college, that cannot be considered inhouse quota.”
Inhouse quota is one of the three quotas other than caste quotas that have seats reserved in the institution, the other two being management quota and minority quota (in minority institutes). Under the inhouse quota, colleges have 10 per cent seats reserved for students of schools run by the same management.
Previously, these schools could be located anywhere. However, these rules make it clear that the inhouse quota is valid only for schools that are located within the same premises as the junior college. The booklet also notifies that if the ‘college guardian sanstha’ has no secondary (10th) school in the same premises, then the junior college will not have any inhouse quota.
D D Kumbar, Vice Principal of Fergusson Junior College objected to the new rule and told The Indian Express, “This will affect Fergusson 100 per cent. The students from DES schools in the city used to take advantage of the inhouse quota, and not just DES but other institutions as well have similar situations. The previous inhouse quota was important. They have not held discussions on this with heads of institutes, they have directly made the law themselves. They should rethink this and go back to the old system.”
Kumbhar added that the students were not aware that this rule change was going to take effect. “The students were not aware that this will happen. They have taken admissions in the institute’s schools so that they can get admission into the junior college…This should not result in dummy colleges getting a boost because if you enforce this rule, the students that won’t get admission in good colleges will go to dummy colleges,” he said.
Similarly, Dr Gajanan Ekbote, chairman of Progressive Education Society, which runs the Modern College of Arts, Science, and Commerce junior college, said, “This rule is wrong. This is a huge injustice to the meritorious students from schools of the same management. Modern High School and Junior College are in the same premises so it won’t affect them, however this is not possible for all institutions…although it will affect our other school. I’m sure the government will rethink this decision”
