Jadavpur University started undergraduate admissions on Friday, two days after the process began at the 461 government and aided colleges through the state-run centralised admission portal.
Notifications uploaded to JU’s website at 5pm for admissions to the science and arts programmes said the varsity would not implement the new OBC rules. The state government had notified the new rules on June 8, and Calcutta High Court on June 17 ordered an interim stay on the implementation.
A JU notification said: “The reservation for OBC category in the admission process is carried forward subject to orders passed by the Hon’ble Calcutta High Court dated 22/5/2024 (which has been challenged before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India)... OBC candidates from states other than West Bengal are not entitled to get the benefit of the reserved quota in educational institutions in West Bengal... Such students may get the benefit of reserved quota if they have a domicile certificate of 10 years’ residency in West Bengal.”
JU acting registrar Indrajit Banerjee said: “We have acted according to legal advice we received.”
Calcutta High Court in May last year struck down several classes as OBC under a 2012 Act for reservation in jobs in Bengal.
In the judgment, the division bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Rajasekhar Mantha had clarified that the state government’s classification of 66 classes of OBC before 2010 had not been interfered with, since they were not challenged.
“The rules that existed before 2010, granting 7 per cent OBC reservations, will be implemented,” said a JU official.
Manojit Mandal, professor of English and the state higher education council’s nominee to JU’s executive council, said it was surprising that the university was not factoring in the new OBC rules, even though the 461 government and aided colleges were following it.
“The government drafted the notification to extend reservation benefits to more disadvantaged communities. But JU did not permit this to happen. To finalise their stance, they even deferred admissions by two days. The university should have consulted the government before taking this decision,” he said.
Partha Pratim Roy, secretary of JU’s teachers’ association, said: “JU is an autonomous institution and fully within its rights to decide on OBC reservations.”
CCTVs on campus
Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed JU’s pro-VC to convene an executive council meeting to decide on installing additional CCTV cameras on campus. The court was hearing a PIL urging a security beef-up at JU.
Acting registrar Banerjee told The Telegraph: “We will decide on the course of action once we get a copy of the order.”
A JU official, however, said JU’s norms did not permit the pro-VC to discharge the duties of a VC.
JU has been without a permanent VC for the past two years.