Bengal passes bill for quota in higher education

The West Bengal assembly Thursday enacted a law providing reservation to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes students in the state's higher educational institutions. The Scheduled Castes students will have 22 percent seats reserved for them in each stream of a higher educational institutional. The figures for the Scheduled Tribes and OBC will be six and 17 percent respectively. In the OBC category, the allocation for the A and B categories will be ten percent and seven percent respectively. The state government will have to add in a phased manner 4,15,408 seats in undergraduate courses and 30,334 seats in post-graduate courses to implement the reservation policy. The bill will involve funds to the tune of Rs.1,069.14 crore over a six-year period. Students constituting the creamy layer to be specified by a directive issued later will not get the reservation benefits which will be applicable from the 2014-15 academic session. The reservation will not surpass 50 percent of seats in any higher educational institution. Speaking on the bill, Leader of Opposition in the assembly Surya Kanta Mishra demanded that the legislation should include the description of the "creamy layer". He asked the state government to study such a law enacted by the central government to extend reservation benefits to OBC students. In his reply, state Higher Education Minister Bratya Basu said the provisions will be applicable to all universities in the state, including those not under his department. From: News Track India