Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
AICTE

Speaking of the 10 percent reservation for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) leading to a 25% increase in the number of seats in engineering colleges, All India Council of Technical Education Chairman Anil D Sahasrabudhe stressed that the number of vacant seats in colleges is likely to go up.

Confirming the statement AICTE Chairman said, the increase of 25 percent seats will be employed in all institutes — government and private. While some colleges already had around 50 percent seats vacant, because of these additional seats to be availed by the low-income group students, the vacancy level can go up, from say 50 percent to 52 percent. There is a possibility, I do not rule out that.”

While at the roundtable session in Ahmedabad with the Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) Prakash Javadekar, Sahasrabduhe discussed the opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics education and research in India and explaining the application of the 10% reservation in educational institutes.

“For a 10 percent increase in reservation for those under Rs 8 lakh income quota, without affecting any existing students’ strength and the number of seats, we need to increase the number of seats approximately by 25 percent. The balance seats after the application of current reservations —15 percent Scheduled Caste (SC), 7.5 percent Schedule Tribes (ST) and 27 percent Other Backward Classes (OBC) — is around 50 percent for general students, which has to be retained. For this, we have to create an additional 10 percent seats for the low-income EWS students,” he said

He also emphasized on the details recorded about the number of seats lying vacant in Self Financed Institutes, rising from 45.37 percent in 2015-16 to 57.06 percent in 2017-18.

In 2017-18, out of nearly 58,000 seats in SFIs offering degree engineering courses, 26,027 seats were filled while 31,682 remained vacant.

Similarly, in 2016-17, out of 58,443 total engineering seats in self-financed colleges, 28,333 were filled and 30,110 seats (51.52 percent) remained vacant.

Meanwhile, in government engineering colleges, the increase in the number of vacant seats rose from 107 in 2015-16 to 455 in 2016-17 to 652 in 2017-18. The rise, from 1.19 to 7.27 percent, is not substantial when compared to vacancies in private institutes.

Saying that the increase in vacant seats would not make much difference, Sahasrabuddhe said, “What is the difference with the increase when already today 50 percent seats are not filled. There are colleges where SC, ST, and OBC seats are not filled. There have been cases when the seats in various states remained vacant because the number of science students clearing Class XII was less than the number of engineering seats available. So, you have to open more science colleges then these seats will be filled. This is expected in 2-4 years when science colleges will increase.”

He also confirmed the conduction of meeting with HRDministry where it was discussed the implementation of the EWS Quota across all AICTE approved colleges.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *