Quotas keep cut-offs high in city colleges

Updated on: Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Merit lists in the city's premier junior colleges inevitably hover around 90% for the open category every year, as there are ridiculously fewer seats than applicants in that category.

Consider this: Jai Hind College, Churchgate, has around 60 seats in bifocal computer science in junior college. Since the college falls under the minority category, 50% seats are reserved under the minority quota. After providing for the other quotas, there are only 19 seats left for open category students. With fewer seats and hundreds of high scorers applying for the seats, cut-offs in such colleges remains almost similar throughout all merit lists.

Minority colleges have around 50% seats reserved under the minority quota. The management, central government employees/freedom fighters, arts and cultural sports, physically handicapped quotas take away another 18% seats. Minority colleges whose trusts run schools as well provide 20% for an in-house quota. So in colleges like NM and Mithibai, Vile Parle, run by the SVKM Trust (which also runs schools), the special reservation goes up to 88%, leaving only 12% seats for students in the open category.

Sunil Mantri, principal of NM College, said, "We have 1120 seats but only 12 % seats are available for open category students. Considering ours is a Gujarati minority institution, all seats in the minority quota are filled."

While colleges like Jai Hind, HR, KC and RD National, run by the Hyderabad Sind Board, have no in-house quota, still the percentage of open category seats is not more than 32%. Jai Hind principal Kirti Narain said, "Our college has around 32-35% seats in the open category as we do not have any attached schools. Also, we often surrender minority seats not filled during offline admissions to the department and they are made available for students in the open category." Seats available in the college for open category students on an average are 384, out of the total 1200 seats.

The situation in non-minority institutions is no better. They have to follow the constitutional reservations totaling around 52%, including reservation for candidates in SC/ST and OBC categories. Then the special quota for management, in-house, arts, leaves only 10% of seats for open category students. Non-minority colleges with no schools attached have an additional 20% (usually meant for in-house students) in the open category.

Kavita Rege, principal of Sathaye College, Vile Parle, a non-minority institution, said, "My college is run by the Parle Tilak Vidyalaya Association, which also runs schools. Therefore, the percentage of seats left for open category comes to only 10%, which is very less. The cut-off remains on the higher side even after three lists." While in science, there are 880 seats in the college, seats left for open category students comes to just 88. The situation is same in the Dahanukar College (preferred for commerce) run by the same management.

Times of India

Quotas keep cut-offs high in city colleges

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