Centre Nod To 27% OBC, 10% EWS Quota in UG-PG Medical, Dental Courses

The Centre has approved reservations for students from Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) categories in medical college admission.

While 27 percent reservation will be provided for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 10 percent reservation for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) in the All India Quota (AIQ) scheme for undergraduate and postgraduate medical / dental courses (MBBS / MD / MS / Diploma / BDS / MDS) from the academic year 2021-22 onwards.

This decision would benefit every year nearly 1,500 OBC students in MBBS and 2,500 OBC students in post-graduation and also around 550 EWS students in MBBS and around 1,000 EWS students in post-graduation, reported Money Control.

Under the current rules, all states are required to surrender 15 per cent undergraduate and 50 per cent postgraduate medical and dental seats in state-run colleges to a "central pool", with the rest going to a "state pool". The country has about 541 medical colleges with a capacity of 80,312 MBBS seats.

There was no reservation in AIQ Scheme up to 2007. In 2007, the Supreme Court introduced a reservation of 15 percent for scheduled castes (SCs) and 7.5 percent for scheduled tribes (STs) in the AIQ scheme.

NEP First Anniversary

July 27 marked the first anniversary of the new National Education Policy. On this occasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Indian sign language will be introduced as a subject in schools across the country. "Indian Sign language has been designated as a subject now. Students can opt to study this. It will promote Indian sign language and will help differently-abled people" said Modi. He added that this will help over 3 lakh differently-abled students in the country, who are dependent on the language for learning.

Meanwhile, 14 engineering colleges across eight states in India have secured permission from the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) to collectively admit over 1,000 students in undergraduate programmes that will be taught in regional languages from the new academic year.

This is the first year that AICTE — in line with provisions of the new National Education Policy (NEP) that calls for education in one's mother tongue as far as possible — has permitted engineering colleges to offer B.Tech programmes in 11 regional languages— Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam and Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi and Oriya.

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