Mumbai: ‘Reservation’ is an unjust policy and admissions for all levels of education should be based purely on merit, claim students and parents. Reservation of seats in different levels of education has adversely affected students leaving no seats for those under the Open category. Students without a caste, social, religious or economic background do not have a fair chance to secure a seat despite scoring high marks.
A mere seven per cent seats are reserved for the Open category for First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions. While, the cut off rank is 9 to 386 for Post-Graduate (PG) for medicine course. In addition, 50 per cent seats are reserved for Schedule Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) at graduate degree level. And now, the state government has started the Maratha quota to reserve seats for Maratha students in Maharashtra.
Reservation has entered at all levels of education, claim students. Sushant Gaikwad, a student, said, “Right from FYJC to PhD level, reservation is prevalent at all stages for all courses. Even if we want to secure admissions to technical courses like engineering or medical, there is no scope for a fair system. We have minimum number of seats and even if we have a 90 per cent grade, we do not get seats in desired colleges.”
Students revealed merit should be the only criteria for admissions. Kartik Krishnan, a student, said, “What is the point of studying hard and scoring high marks if we are not going to get a seat? How is it fair when our classmates who secure less marks but end up getting a seat in the best college due to their caste quota? Courses like medicine, engineering, pharmacy, biotechnology, physics and chemistry are based on knowledge and information so merit ought to be the only important criteria for admissions.”
