This year, in the MBBS and MD admissions, 27 per cent reservation in the All India Quota seats will be reserved for students from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced 27% reservation for OBCs and another 10% for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) in the All India Quota (AIQ) scheme for undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental courses, including MBBS, MD, MS, Diploma, BDS and MDS from the current (2021-22) academic year.
The decision came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday directed the concerned union ministries to facilitate an effective solution to this long pending issue. Around 1500 OBC MBBS students and 2500 OBC post-graduate students and also around 550 EWS MBBS students and around 1000 EWS post-graduate students will be benefited from this announcement.
The 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 at a good medical college located in another state. AIQ consists of 15% of the total available undergraduate seats and 50% of the total available post-graduate seats in government medical colleges. It was only in 2007 that the Supreme Court introduced a reservation of 15% for SCs and 7.5% for STs under the AIQ Scheme.
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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 the 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.
Thanking all those who consistently legally and politically fought to achieve this feat, All India Federation Other Backward Classes (AIOBC) General Secretary Karunanidhy G said, "This is a great victory for social justice."
