Sultanate Of Quota

Over 70 Years of Independence: The nation travels from being Republic of India to new identity of Sultanate of Quota.

The news item dated 7th March 2019 in Times of India, Mumbai was quite disturbing.

“With EWS, Maratha quotas, reservation in FYJCs set to hit 103%.”

Open category students could be left with no seats in junior colleges that are attached to schools, with the state having issued notifications for two new quotas—16% for Marathas and 10% for economically weaker sections (EWS) in the general category.

The share of reserved seats in such colleges would hit 103% as their current reservation is 77%— 20% for in-house students, over and above the 52% so far for reservations (SC, ST, OBC, NT, etc) and 5% for management quota.

Some junior colleges with attached schools are Sathaye, Dahanukar and Bhavan’s, in the suburbs. Under the online admission process for FYJC, 330 of the 810 junior colleges have attached schools. Of these, the minority ones will remain unaffected by the two additional quotas.

As if these quotas were not sufficient, a school education official as per the news item has said they are considering reducing the in-house quota to 10% so that at least 7% of seats will be left for open category students. This proposed magnanimity towards open category will leave 4% seats (103% – 7%) for open category.

The quotas thus start disturbing the education system right from 11th standard. As one goes higher, the situation gets worst.

Take the case of Medical PG admissions. In view of these variety of quotas, the seats available for open category students are only 5%. As if this 5% availability was too large for open category, the Maharashtra Government is toying with the idea of introducing another quota of 10% for those who would work in rural areas for about 12 years including the residenceship years of 3 years.

The idea behind this new quota is to ensure that rural areas get the treatment by best doctors. The idiots in Mantralaya and Government don’t realize that even the best doctor in the world cannot treat any patient in rural health centers or hospitals for want of required infrastructure. Instead of creating infrastructure in rural hospitals, the bureaucrats are creating another class of quota. If these quota become reality, the overall quota would reach 105% for PG Medical education. And the merit would have to say goodbye to this Nation.

Education is available in this country not on the basis of merit but on the basis of which category of quota one fits in. It is a sorry state of affairs.

People have filed Writ Petition challenging the quotas. But can one have any expectation from the Judiciary? The answer to this would be an emphatic “NO” when the Judiciary itself is interested in promoting the reservations even in the appointment of judicial appointments.

Ease norms for SC/STs to be judges – says Supreme Court 

Just sometime back, Kerala High Court could not find any appointee from SC/ST category because of extremely poor marks scored by these candidates.

Over 2,700 candidates had competed for 45 posts of judicial officer and only 31 general category candidates could be selected. The bench of CJI Gogoi and Justices L N Rao and Sanjiv Khanna said that in such situations, HCs should relax the minimum percentage of marks, maybe from 35% to 30% depending on the situation at hand. “It is surprising that in a state like Kerala you can’t find 45 candidates for judicial officers’ posts,” SC Bench headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi said.

Talking of the general scenario where representation of SCs, STs and other backward classes in services was below the level proportionate to their population, the CJI said, “For reserved category, HCs can relax minimum percentage of qualifying marks to give them representation in judiciary. Otherwise, reserved category candidates can never pass the examination and the posts earmarked for them will always remain vacant.”

The CJI said minimum marks were being relaxed for reserved category candidates in examinations for recruitment in other services and HCs could examine this aspect to take appropriate steps. Data received by the law ministry from HCs last year showed that SCs comprised less than 14% of judges in the subordinate judiciary and STs about 12%.

The percentage of posts of judicial officers for SCs was less than their share of the population, which stands at 16.6% according to the 2011 Census. Tribal representation is higher than their population, which is 8.6% of India’s total headcount. Women judicial officers constituted 28% of judges in the subordinate judiciary.

What a statistic – so much SC/ST, so much women, so much of this, so much of that category..!!!. No statistics is available on number of meritorious judges. This is really sickening.

Thus when Judiciary itself is inclined to promote reservation rather than merits in appointment of judges in lower judiciary, some of whom may eventually find a place in some High Court, and when each Indian is clamoring to declare himself/herself as backward, and when the political parties are competing with each other in expanding the scope of reservations by inventing new criteria day in day out, the future of MERIT in India is as bleak as future of PEACE in Pakistan.