After over a year of struggle by PhD scholars and student groups for the implementation of reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) students, in state-level agricultural universities and colleges, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has finally released a notice, implementing the same from the coming academic year 2024-25.
In an official notice by ICAR dated November 2023, it was informed that a 27 per cent reservation for students from the OBC category and 10 per cent reservation for students from Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) will be implemented from the coming academic year in admission to 20 per cent bachelor’s and 30 per cent PG/PhD All India Quota seats contributed by the State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) under ICAR AU System.
Background
Dr Manu SM, former PhD Scholar and student representative to the Academic Council of IARI, New Delhi, and President of Babasaheb Ambedkar and Birsa Students Association (BABSA) has been at the forefront of this fight, demanding reservation for OBC students to be extended to state-run agricultural institutes as well.
The association highlighted that while a 27 per cent reservation is the present policy in Central and ICAR deemed-to-be universities, OBC students have been facing injustice and loss of seats at the SAUs.
“ICAR conducts all-India level entrance examinations for agricultural sciences and allied degree programmes for 74 universities and colleges. Out of these, there was no OBC quota for the seats in state-run universities and colleges even after 20-25 years of the examination. In 2022, another student from IARI, Vishnu Prasad and I decided to analyse the data of OBC students at the institutes and realised that many students from OBC categories have been missing opportunities due to lack of this reservation policy,” Dr Manu told EdexLive.
As per the data collected by the students, in the last two academic years, OBC community students have lost about 380 PhD, 830 master's, and 770 bachelor's seats in the absence of any reservation policy.
With the help of the All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA), the students met and sent representations to several authorities. In September 2022, the association sent a letter to the minister of agriculture and farmers’ welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar, highlighting the lack of reservation policy for OBC students in state-run universities. The students also approached the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) and presented crucial documents and statistics at an OBC intellectual meeting in the presence of several MPs.
Lauding the new move, AIOBCSA National President Kiran Kumar Gowd said, “This has been a very long-standing issue and only now, the administration has addressed it after over one year of struggle. Last year, we were in Delhi meeting Rajya Sabha MPs and various other authorities putting forward our concerns and demands. We sent several letters to ministers and officials and I am glad that the reservation has been successfully implemented now.”
