Odisha: Congress MLAs seek Governor’s intervention to address “injustice” to OBC and SC/ST students

Bhubaneswar (Odisha) [India], August 29 (ANI): A delegation of Odisha Congress MLAs met Odisha Governor Raghubar Das on Thursday and submitted a memorandum seeking urgent intervention for addressing “injustice” to OBC and SC/ST students for their academic career in the state.

The leaders highlighted concerns pertaining to reservations in higher education in the state.

The memorandum stated that due to the alleged biased reservation policy, hundreds of students from the OBC, SC, and ST categories are being denied their constitutional rights to pursue higher education every year.

They highlighted the disparity in the reservation policies for backward classes of higher education citing that the Scheduled castes and Scheduled Tribes of the state get only 12% and 8% reservation respectively as compared to 11.25% and 22.5% in the employment sector.

The memorandum cited that a directive from the state’s Department of Higher Education has not been fully implemented, which mandated 22.5% reservation for STs and 16.25% for SCs in higher education.

They further accused the state government of not providing OBC students their due share in the state.

The memorandum highlighted that the Centre’s 2019 directive to reserve 10% of seats for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), benefiting just 6% of the population, has remained silent on providing OBC students which is 54% of the population their due share even after the enactment of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act of 2006, which mandates OBC reservation across India.

“MBBS admissions counselling that began on 20th August, and with the state directing the OJEE to commence institute admissions from 29th August, we request your immediate intervention to direct the Government to stop this counselling process and ask to Implement a 38.75% reservation for SC-ST and a 27% reservation for OBC-SEBC students. Only after these reservations are enforced should the OJEE Committee be allowed to proceed with the admissions process’ the memorandum added.

Congress MLA Sofia Firdous said “We met the honourable governor and he was kind enough to listen to our issues. SC, ST and OBC constitute 94% of the population in Odisha. It is dominated by these communities but there is no reservation in technical education”.

“There are reservations for jobs but there is not enough reservation in the education system and preparation phase,” she added.