Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Fill vacant OBC seats from general category’

The Supreme Court ruled on that all vacant seats reserved for other backward classes or OBCs in Central educational institutions should be filled up by general category students.A five-judge Constitution Bench comprising Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices Arijit Pasayat, C.K. Thakker, R.V. Raveendran and Dalveer Bhandari passed this order on an application filed by the former Chennai IIT Director, Professor P.V. Indiresan, seeking a direction that the 432 vacant seats in SC/ST/OBC categories in the IITs be filled by general category candidates.The apex court also directed the Union government to maintain cut-off marks for OBC students at 10% less than the general category.The institutes must “endeavour to fill up” vacant seats with general category students by the end of October, the Chief Justice said.The Centre, however, had already informed the Court that only 20 out of 654 seats meant for the OBCs in the 13 IITs remained vacant, of which 11 were in architecture/design course. Also only 47 seats meant for SC/STs remained vacant in the six new IITs because no preparatory course could be held.

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