Arjun Singh

New Delhi, Aug. 20: The bill reserving 27 per cent of seats for other backward classes in central institutes of higher learning will come up before the cabinet tomorrow.

The human resource development ministry has also penned a draft bill on quotas in unaided universities, but the cabinet will limit itself to the legislation on government-aided institutions like IITs and IIMs, sources said.

The ministry has also left it to the cabinet to decide on how the “creamy layer” within OBCs would be treated, the sources said. This follows a lack of consensus on whether this group should be given benefits like the rest.

The Centre feels skipping unaided institutions now will make it easier to push through the bill on aided institutions in Parliament’s monsoon session, which ends on August 25.

Official sources said the bill for quotas in unaided institutions, now with various ministries, will be taken up later, probably after the oversight committee headed by Veerappa Moily prepares a road map.

However, the UPA’s southern allies — the DMK and the PMK — have urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to implement quotas in one stroke. DMK leader and Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi and PMK chief S. Ramadoss wrote to the Prime Minister recently, saying there should be no “dilution in the issue”.

Backed by Left parties and key allies like the DMK and the PMK, HRD minister Arjun Singh wants the implementation of quotas to begin from the next academic year.

However, the oversight committee dropped enough hints in a recent interim report handed to the Prime Minister that the measure would have to take effect in phases because of “constraints at many elite institutions”.

These institutions have expressed concern that the time limit being set for ushering in reservations was too tight. There is also the fear that the “sudden expansion of seats would lead to loss of merit and excellence”.

The oversight panel is expected to submit its final report by August 31.