New OBC reservation scheme for Medical and Dental courses

OBC reservations in AIQ for medical and dental schemes has now been enforced.

 New OBC reservation scheme for Medical and Dental courses

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• The story: The Centre has finally decided to provide 27% reservation to other backward classes (OBCs) and 10% to economically weaker sections (EWS) in undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses under National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET).
• AIQ: The All India Quota (AIQ) Scheme was introduced in 1986 under the directions of the Supreme Court to provide for domicile-free merit-based opportunities to students from any state to study in a good medical college located in another state.

1. AIQ consists of 15% of total available undergraduate seats and 50% of total available postgraduate seats in government medical colleges.
2. Initially, there was no reservation under the AIQ Scheme. In 2007, the Supreme Court introduced 15% reservation for Scheduled Castes and 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes.
3. When the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act became effective in 2007, providing for uniform 27% reservation to OBCs, the same was implemented in all central educational institutions including Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Harding Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University and Banaras Hindu University. However, this was not extended to the AIQ seats of state medical and dental colleges.

• Scale: The government said the decision will benefit nearly 1,500 OBC students in MBBS and 2,500 OBC students in postgraduation, and also about 550 EWS students in MBBS and about 1,000 EWS students in postgraduation every year.
• Why now: The move follows a complaint filed by the All India Federation of OBC Employees Welfare Association before the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) in 2020 in which it was alleged that since 2017 OBCs were not being provided the mandatory 27% reservation in all-India quota seats which are pooled from state colleges and that the seats were being transferred to the general category. The complaint had alleged that this cost OBCs around 10,000 seats in three years. The NCBC issued a notice to health ministry and the issue was under consideration for more than a year.
• Increased medical seats: This decision is also in sync with the reforms carried out in the field of medical education since 2014. MBBS seats in the country increased 56% to 84,649 in 2020 from 54,348 seats in 2014 and the number of postgraduate seats increased 80% to 54,275 from 30,191. During this period, 179 new medical colleges were established, raising the total number in the country to 558.
• Mandal Commission: Three decades ago, on 7 August 1990, PM Vishwanath Pratap Singh announced that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) would get 27 per cent reservation in jobs in central government services and public sector units. The announcement was made in Parliament. The decision was based on a report submitted by Mandal Commission on 31 December 1980 that recommended reservations for OBCs not just in government jobs but also central education institutions. The Mandal Commission was set up in 1979 under the Morarji Desai government and chaired by B.P. Mandal.

1. The Morarji Desai government set up the Commission to identify socially or educationally backward classes to address caste discrimination. B.P. Mandal was once the Bihar chief minister. A parliamentary panel on the Welfare of OBCs in its 2019 report noted that in spite of four revisions of the income criteria since 1997, the 27 per cent vacancies reserved in favour of OBCs were not being filled up. There was poor OBC occupancy levels in central government ministries.
2. To address these anomalies, the Narendra Modi government constituted a four-member commission headed by retired Delhi High Court Chief Justice G. Rohini in October 2017. The committee’s mandate was to look into the issue of sub categorisation within OBCs. The Rohini Commission found that out of almost 6,000 castes and communities in the OBCs, only 40 such communities had gotten 50 per cent of reservation benefits for admission in central educational institutions and recruitment to the civil services. Close to 20 per cent of OBC communities did not get a quota benefit from 2014 to 2018.
3. To ensure that benefits percolated down to the most backward communities, the creamy layer criteria was invoked in the popularly known Supreme Court ruling called the ‘Indira Sawhney Judgment’. It was delivered by the nine-judge bench on the Mandal Commission report in November 1992. Under the present rules, a household with an annual income of Rs 8 lakh or above would be classified as belonging to the ‘creamy layer’ among OBCs and therefore, would not be eligible for reservations. However, it was reported that the Modi government had proposed to increase the ceiling for the creamy layer distinction from Rs 8 lakh per annum to Rs 12 lakh per annum. In July 2020, the National Commission for Backward Classes demanded that the income ceiling be doubled to Rs 16 lakh per annum.

 

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