Odisha Government notified 15 per cent reservation in the state medical and engineering colleges for the government school students.
The order closes a process that took a little over three months. Under the 15 per cent reservation, Naveen Patnaik told the state Assembly in March, government school students would no longer lose seats to rivals who could simply afford better coaching. “This clearly shows that there is inequity arising from physical and economic access to coaching institutions,” the Chief Minister said while moving the resolution, according to IANS.
“To remove inequalities and provide a fair chance to the disadvantaged section of students over their counterparts in private schools, the state government has decided to reserve 15 per cent of seats in medical and engineering colleges”, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said.
He further said that “this initiative will enable talent and give an equal opportunity to the students from state-run schools who do not have access to coaching for the competitive examinations”. The students who have passed the High School examination under the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) and Class XII examination regulated by the Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE) will be eligible.
Behind the 15 per cent reservation: Naveen Patnaik and a judge’s report
The decision was first announced on 29 December 2020. The state cabinet had decided to provide reservation to government school and college students, the Chief Minister said in a statement published by the Odisha Information and Public Relations Department, because the number of such students reaching medical and engineering courses had been falling. “This is not due to lack of merit but a deeper divide in access to coaching,” he said. A high-level committee led by a retired High Court judge was to settle the details and report within three months, so that the change could apply from the next academic year.
That committee was set up on 8 January under Justice A K Mishra, a retired judge of the Orissa High Court, Odisha Bytes reported. Its case rested on a mismatch the Chief Minister set out in the House. About 86 per cent of Odisha’s students are in government schools, yet they take 23 per cent of seats in medical colleges and 21 per cent in state engineering colleges, while the 12 per cent who study in private schools take almost 60 per cent of the places, IANS reported.
The Assembly passed the resolution unanimously on 23 March 2021, during a special discussion marking 100 years since Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to the state, Deccan Herald reported. The Leader of the Opposition, P K Naik, and the Congress Legislature Party leader, Narasingha Mishra, both welcomed the move. The notification followed on 31 March.
The notification was released by the Skill Development and Technical Education department stating the update in the reservation policy has made to ease those at the underprivileged end of the rope. The intersectional implementation of the reservation system is necessary to promote aptitude while talking about the unreserved groups.
These entrance tests are for engineering courses including B.Tech, B.E and B.Arch while medical courses including MBBS, BDS, BHMS, BAMS, BSMS, and BUMS. The notification further read that if the reserved seats are left unoccupied, the colleges and Institutes will be allowed to fill those seats with candidates from other respective categories.
What the notification says
The reservation is horizontal: it cuts across every vertical category, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the unreserved group alike, rather than sitting beside them. The government relied on Section 9 of the Odisha Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fee) Act, 2007, and the order defines a government high school to include aided high schools, higher secondary schools and junior colleges as defined in the Odisha Education Act, 1969, Odisha Bytes reported. Eligible students also remain free to compete for unreserved seats, so the quota works as a floor rather than a ceiling.
With the change, total reservation in the state’s medical and engineering colleges rises to 48 per cent, from the 33 per cent previously set aside for Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste students, Deccan Herald reported. The figures behind the order:
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Students in government schools | About 86 per cent |
| Their share of medical college seats | 23 per cent |
| Their share of state engineering seats | 21 per cent |
| Students in private schools | 12 per cent |
| Private school students’ share of seats | Almost 60 per cent |
| Total reservation after the change | 48 per cent, up from 33 |
Odisha was not the first state to take this route. Tamil Nadu had already given students of its government schools a 7.5 per cent preference in medical and dental admissions, first by a government order dated 29 October 2020 and then through Act 34 of 2020, the record of the Madras High Court judgment on the law shows. Odisha’s version is twice as large, reaches engineering as well as medicine, and, unlike the Tamil Nadu law, counts aided schools among the government schools it covers.
What has happened since
The 15 per cent reservation for government school students, Naveen Patnaik had said in December, should apply from the next academic year, and it did. The Odisha Joint Entrance Examination guidelines for MBBS and BDS counselling in 2021-22 set aside 15 per cent for the State Government Schools category, a horizontal reservation “covering all vertical reservations as well as unreserved Group”. A candidate must have passed Class 10 under the Board of Secondary Education from a government high school and Class 12 under the Council of Higher Secondary Education from a government higher secondary school or government junior college. The 2022-23 instructions carried the same rule.
The quota reaches only the seats the state fills through its own counselling. OJEE counsels 85 per cent of seats in government medical and dental colleges and all seats in private ones, its guidelines say, while deemed universities such as Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan are counselled by the Directorate General of Health Services. AIIMS Bhubaneswar does not appear in the OJEE seat matrix. The spot round matrix of 4 April 2022 shows a government school column inside every category, for private colleges such as the Hi-Tech medical colleges in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela as well as for SCB in Cuttack and the other state-run colleges.
In Tamil Nadu, the Madras High Court upheld the 7.5 per cent law on 7 April 2022 and told the state government to review it within five years, taking steps meanwhile to improve teaching in government schools so that the reservation need not run beyond that period. The Odisha counselling guidelines for 2021-22 and 2022-23 set no such time limit.
For private schools in Odisha, the order changes the pitch to parents: a place in a government higher secondary school now carries its own route into the state’s professional colleges. For coaching companies, whose unequal reach was the core of the committee’s case, the message runs the other way. The 15 per cent reservation for government school students, Naveen Patnaik argued in the House, is meant to make entrance results look more like the state’s classrooms.
