New Delhi, April 11: The Centre plans to allow higher education institutions to reserve fewer seats for OBC students this year than they had earlier promised, to get the quota rolling.

But the relaxation is likely to be accompanied by a hint that the rest of the 27 per cent quota might have to be implemented in one go next year, senior government officials said.

The human resource development ministry today sent feelers on the OBC reservation, cleared yesterday by the Supreme Court, to all central higher education institutions, including the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management, officials told The Telegraph.

The ministry asked them how prepared they were to implement the quota from the coming academic session.

Sources said each institution had been asked to submit detailed reports indicating how it planned to carry out the 54 per cent seat hike necessary to implement the quota without reducing the intake of general category students.

Each institution had submitted its seat-increase plan two years ago to a government panel — the oversight committee set up to prepare the road map for the implementation of the OBC quota.

The reservation — and the 54 per cent expansion in seats — was to be staggered over three years.

The IITs had agreed to an 18 per cent seat hike in the first year, while the IIMs had each given different plans. Central universities had agreed to complete the exercise in two years.

But with some institutes saying yesterday that they might not be able to fulfil their commitment for the first year, the ministry today decided to offer them a relaxation.

General elections are barely a year away, and several political parties are queuing up to rake in the benefit from the reservation. In this backdrop, the government cannot afford to take a wrong step.

Once the institutes submit their new plans, they will be examined by the Arjun Singh-led HRD ministry.

Sources, however, said the plan to stagger the implementation of quotas over three years was under review, indicating that the government might pressure institutions to complete the seat expansion in two years — by the 2009-10 session.

The three-year implementation was initially meant to start from the 2007-08 session, and thus be completed by 2009-10, they said. But with one year lost in courtroom battles, “things have changed”, a source said.

The change in plans is likely to be conveyed to the institutes as a hint dropped during discussions on the quota, the sources said.

Once they get the hint, the government hopes the institutes will be deterred from lowering the number of reserved seats this year by “too significant” an amount, they added.