Minority colleges to approach court over social quotas

Time of India

a day ago

Mumbai: Minority colleges in the city are preparing to move court against the "sudden" implementation of social reservations such as SC/ST and OBC quotas for their non-minority seats.
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The state govt is in the process of releasing the provisional merit list for the ongoing first-year junior college (FYJC) admissions on Thursday.
While the state govt did not issue any official notification, the implementation of social reservations for non-minority seats came to light only when the seat matrices of minority colleges were put out on the admission portal. The department has now cited a 2013 govt resolution dated May 27, by the state's minority department, which mentioned that in the 50% seats that are filled by non-minority students in the open category in these institutions, "it is mandatory to admit students from SC/ST, NT and other backward classes".
Principals are worried about the sharp reduction in open category seats in their colleges due to this.
A minority college principal said that writing a letter to the department at this point may not help, as many students would have already applied to these reserved seats and the department may allot students accordingly in the next few days. "We will still write a letter to the department and see their response. There is a recent Bombay high court order from 2017 in the St Xavier's College case which we plan to cite in the letter.
This order was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018. We will simultaneously consult principals from other colleges in a day or two and will also plan a legal recourse if talks with the govt fail. They did not issue any official document or directive before the process commenced. The orders they are citing now are vague and this has come as a shocking development for all of us. There is a reduction in management quota seats, too, which has now come down to half," said the principal, adding that this was also not notified.
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Some principals are worried that if the discussions with the govt leads to a stalemate, junior college admissions across the state may get delayed.
A govt official cited the May 6 resolution, which principals termed as "ambiguous", and another one from the minority department dated May 27, 2013, which read, "Aided religious/linguistic minority educational institutions should have admit at least 50% of their admission capacity to the students belonging to the minority group which they have got and on the remaining 50% of the seats non-minority students can be admitted.
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