New Delhi, July 24: The panel set up to prepare the roadmap for implementing reservation for other backward classes in institutes of higher learning has recommended they draw faculty not only from other universities but also industry to meet the demands of expansion.

Institutes have to increase seats by nearly half to ensure that the 27 per cent quota does not affect general category students.

In an interim report, the oversight committee said one of the main challenges lies in increasing teacher strength.

“We need to be innovative in our thinking,” Veerappa Moily, who heads the Centre-appointed panel, said after a four-hour meeting where the committee finalised its interim report.

“We will submit the report to the Prime Minister in a couple of days,” he added.

The committee will submit its final report to the government before August 31.

The panel has come up with several suggestions on strengthening faculties. It has proposed hiring teachers on contract for limited tenures and a scheme under which those who are likely to retire can continue teaching without occupying substantive positions.

The report stresses that innovative measures should not alter the “core compensation packages” of academic staff, though there should be flexibility regarding non-monetary and monetary incentives.

The 27 per cent quota bill, expected to be passed in Parliament’s monsoon session, will come into effect from the next academic year by when institutions of higher education would have to be ready with the necessary infrastructure to cope with the additional influx of students.

The interim report has made broad recommendations on how to meet the challenge but has left it to institutions to work out the nitty-gritty.

“We have suggested that each institution should have an empowerment committee to decide the roadmap they want to follow in terms of infrastructure and faculty,” Moily said.

The empowerment committee is the latest among the layer of panels involved in the exercise to sort out the quota hitches.

The government had earlier set up sub-groups on the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management, central universities and medical and agricultural institutes to provide inputs to the oversight panel.

The sub-committees on the IITs and IIMs have suggested a staggered implementation of the quota because of infrastructure constraints. But Moily dodged a response when asked whether the interim report has suggested a staggered implementation. “It is too early to say anything,” the former Karnataka chief minister said.

The human resource development ministry wants the 27 per cent quota to be implemented at one go.

Moily said his committee had decided to submit the interim report because the government is keen to implement reservation in the next academic year as “time is running out”.