Cuttack, July 29: Orissa High Court has declined to allow the management of technical institutions to have a say in the selection of students to fill up NRI quota seats that remain vacant.

The court expressed disinclination to appreciate this proposition in the absence of any decision or judgments in favour of such a proposal.

NRI quota seats are reserved for the children of someone, who stays outside the country but holds an Indian passport.

There are about 50,000 seats in the 88 private or self-financed technical institutions in the state.

According to the OJEE-2017 admission rules, 5 per cent of the seats are reserved for the NRIs. But, a large number of NRI quota seats remain vacant every year.

Some of the technical institutes - Silicon Institute of Technology, Odisha Engineering College, C.V. Raman College of Engineering and Adarsha College of Engineering - had filed petitions for direction to be given a free hand in filling up the vacant NRI quota seats.

Prescribed procedures indicate that if the NRI seats remain vacant, those are to be given to general candidates following the merit list. The respective colleges would themselves be entitled to fill up the vacant NRI quota seats from amongst the candidates enlisted by the OJEE and strictly on the basis of merit.

The technical institutions contended that since they had been given the right to fill up the NRI seats from amongst the NRI quota candidates, the same principle should be applied for filling up the vacant NRI quota seats.

But, the counsels for the petitioner institutes failed to point out any provision or court rulings whereby they would be entitled to have their sway in the matter of enrolling students of their choice from amongst the merit list of the OJEE for filling up the vacant NRI quota seats.

OJEE counsel Subir Palit opposed the plea saying "the petitioner institutions have made endeavour to cherry pick the students from the merit list, which is outside the law and should not be encouraged".

Taking note of it, the court disposed of the petitions at admission stage on consent of the counsel for the parties on July 19.

The division bench of Chief Justice Vineet Saran and Justice K.R. Mohapatra said: "We are of the clear opinion that the vacant NRI seats of the respective colleges have to be filled up from amongst the general candidates. The process may be completed by the OJEE at the earliest."

"The cases at hand are clear cases where, after the NRI seats fall vacant, the same are to be treated as general seats to be filled up from amongst the general candidates. Thus, the procedure to fill up the general candidates seats has to be followed while filling up of such seats," the division bench ruled.