Mumbai: High Court aallows minority colleges to surrender in-house quota seats

THE FIRST year junior college (FYJC) admissions hit yet another roadblock Wednesday after the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court allowed minority colleges to surrender in-house quota seats under the Central Admission Process (CAP). This partly overturns a July 16 ruling by a bench of justice BP Dharmadhikari and ZA Haq that asked the government to return all vacant quota seats — minority (50 per cent), management (20) and in-house (5 per cent) — to the minority colleges, which could admit students to these seats at their levels.

The list of vacancies will now be released on Friday morning and candidates can fill their choices on Friday and Saturday. The third merit list will be out on Tuesday (July 31), according to education department. Suvarna Kharat, deputy secretary, school education department, said: “With this judgment the seat count will increase and allotment has to be done on merit. So, we will first open the link for minority colleges to surrender their in-house quota seats and then release the vacancies. After that we will allow candidates to change their preferences again.”

This would mean that candidates have to fill out their preferences for the third time. At present around 1 lakh seats were available for over 1.43 lakh aspirants for the third round of allotment — this is exclusive of around 80,000 minority and management quota seats in minority colleges. The numbers are likely to increase with minority colleges surrendering their vacant in-house quota seats. This opens up avenues for candidates in some of the sought-after colleges that had not released a second merit list.

The admission process has already been delayed by at least a month. A senior official from the education department said that the admission process should have been completed by now but will now continue until August.
News Source (Indian Express)