The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has taken a decision to provide 27 percent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 10 percent reservation for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) in the All India Quota (AIQ) scheme for undergraduate and postgraduate medical / dental courses (MBBS / MD / MS / Diploma / BDS / MDS) from the current academic year 2021-22 onwards.
This was decided by PM Modi in a meeting held on July 26, said the health ministry in a statement.
Calling this a 'landmark decision', the prime minister said that this will immensely help thousands of youth every year get better opportunities and create a new paradigm of social justice in the country.
This decision would benefit every year nearly 1,500 OBC students in MBBS and 2,500 OBC students in post-graduation and also around 550 EWS students in MBBS and around 1,000 EWS students in post-graduation.
The health ministry said in a statement that this decision is in sync with the significant reforms carried out in the field of medical education since 2014.
During the last six years, MBBS seats in the country have increased by 56 percent from 54,348 seats in 2014 to 84,649 seats in 2020. Similarly, the number of PG seats have increased by 80 percent from 30,191 seats in 2014 to 54,275 seats in 2020.
During the same period, 179 new medical colleges have been established and now the country has 558 (government 289 and private 269) medical colleges.
What is the AIQ scheme?
The All India Quota (AIQ) Scheme was introduced in 1986 under Supreme Court directions to provide for domicile-free merit based opportunities to students from any State to aspire to study in a good medical college located in another State.
All India Quota consists of 15 percent of total available UG seats and 50% of total available PG seats in government medical colleges.
Initially, there was no reservation in AIQ Scheme up to 2007. In 2007, the Supreme Court introduced reservation of 15 percent for scheduled castes (SCs) and 7.5 percent for scheduled tribes (STs) in the AIQ Scheme.
When the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act became effective in 2007 providing for uniform 27 percent reservation to OBCs, the same was implemented in all the Central Educational Institutions viz. Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Harding Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University and Banaras Hindu University.
However, this was not extended to the AIQ seats of State medical and dental colleges. So this announcement will benefit all students.
Who will benefit?
The health ministry said in a statement that the OBC students from across the country shall now be able to take benefit of this reservation in AIQ Scheme to compete for seats in any State.
Being a Central Scheme, the Central List of OBCs shall be used for this reservation. Around 1,500 OBC students in MBBS and 2500 in post-graduation will be benefitted through this reservation.
In order to provide benefit to students belonging to EWS category in admission to higher educational Institutions, a constitutional amendment was made in 2019 which enabled the provision of 10 percent reservation for EWS category.
Accordingly, seats in medical / dental colleges were increased over two years in 2019-20 and 2020-21 to accommodate this additional 10 percent EWS reservation so that the total number of seats available for unreserved category do not reduce.
In the AIQ seats, however, this benefit had not been extended so far. Therefore, alongwith the 27 percent reservation for OBCs, 10% reservation for EWS is also being extended in AIQ seats for all the undergraduate / postgraduate medical/dental courses from the current academic year 2021-22.
This will benefit every year around more than 550 EWS students for MBBS and around 1,000 EWS students for PG medical courses, said the health ministry.
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