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The Supreme Court judgment on admissions in professional colleges has spread gloom among students of depressed castes who find the portals of higher education slammed shut to them all of a sudden. According to legal experts, the SC judgment would shatter the academic dreams of thousands of students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes in the state.
The SC directive not to impose reservation policy in private unaided and minority professional colleges would deprive such students of about 32,000 engineering seats, 600 medical and 9,000 MBA and MCA seats. They would also lose thousands of seats in postgraduate courses offered at the university level.
With the managements being permitted to have their own selection procedure and fee structure, educationists and officials fear that only those students who can ‘afford’ professional education monetarily would get seats. “The judgment is against the very spirit of the Constitution,” said R Krishnaiah, president of the Andhra Pradesh Backward Classes Association. “The judiciary is expected to protect weaker sections. Judgments of this nature will hamper their social and economic uplift,” he added.
Significantly, the judgment comes at a time when political parties are debating job reservation for SC, ST and BC candidates in the private sector. Although the students who got admissions this year have escaped, the axe would fall on many thousands next year. The State officials are planning to approach the apex court explaining the difficulties involved in implementing the judgment.
“Nearly 80 per cent of professional education is taken care of by the private sector,” said Prof KC Reddy, chairman of the AP State Council for Higher Education. “The government, because of its financial constraints, is not in a position to begin more institutions.” The officials are expected to brief Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy on the fallout of the judgment and then file a case in the Supreme Court.
For all professional courses, the government has fixed a quota of seats for which the State-appointed convener will make admissions based on merits. As per the reservation policy, 15 per cent of seats go to SCs, six per cent for STs, 25 per cent for BCs and five per cent for Muslims. Notwithstanding an earlier SC judgement that the government should not have control over seats and fee structure in private and professional colleges, the State government had evolved an admission procedure and fee structure through consensus.
Officials are also worried whether the judgment would affect the implementation of the Presidential order on reservation to local students. There were fears that the judgment would lead to more exploitation by private colleges. “Although the judgment talks of prevention of profiteering, it will pave way for more rampant commercialisation of education,” Krishnaiah observed.
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