New Delhi, Aug. 9: The Indian Institutes of Management have surpassed their own targets for OBC quota admissions, selecting in 2009 over twice the number of backward class candidates they picked last year.

The six older IIMs have together admitted 345 OBC students this year as compared with 148 in 2008, with the institutes in Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Kozhikode racing ahead of their own targets.

The other three IIMs — in Calcutta, Bangalore and Indore — are either on a par with their targets or marginally ahead, according to statistics provided by the six institutes to the human resource development ministry. These statistics were presented to Parliament earlier this week by the HRD ministry in its outcome budget for 2009-10.

“We have overshot our targets a little, but there will still be work to do next year,” IIM Lucknow director Devi Singh told The Telegraph.

But officials at other IIMs said they were “pleasantly surprised” that their OBC quota seats were not lying vacant. The IIMs had in 2006 voiced concern that the quota law proposed by then HRD minister Arjun Singh might lead to a dilution in standards.

“The truth is I am pleasantly surprised. We are not really struggling to fill quota seats. Our ability to go beyond our own targets suggests that we may have overestimated the challenge of implementing OBC quotas,” an IIM Ahmedabad administrator said.

Unlike the IITs, which decided on a uniform pattern of expansion to complete 27 per cent OBC reservations over three years, each IIM set its own targets. The three years began in 2008, when the quotas were first implemented, and would end next year.

Most IIMs set targets leaving the biggest chunk of the expansion work for the third year, prompting some HRD ministry officials to describe the strategy as the “hop, skip and jump” used in the triple jump.

These targets form a part of the oversight committee on the implementation of the OBC reservations, set up by Manmohan Singh in his first term as Prime Minister.

IIM Ahmedabad committed to ensuring 13 per cent reservation for OBCs by the second year of the implementation of the quotas. This required the IIM to create 46 OBC seats by this session. The institute, popularly ranked highest among the IIMs, admitted 54 students this year under the quotas.

“The institutes appear to have jumped before the skip. The last part of the triple jump should now be easy,” an HRD ministry official laughed.

The Lucknow IIM had committed to ensuring 18 per cent quota — or 59 seats — for OBC students by the academic session that has just started. The IIM has admitted 77 OBC students on quota seats, the outcome budget says.

IIM Kozhikode had said it would implement 9 per cent OBC quotas (20 reserved seats) by 2009. It has admitted 42 students to the OBC-reserved seats this year.

“We had been extremely conservative with our commitments to the oversight committee, leaving most of our quota expansion for the last year. But we realised we could save ourselves a sprint at the end,” an IIM Kozhikode official said.