Ahmedabad, DeshGujarat:

Gujarat government has announced 10% reservation for economically backward class(EBC) in education and jobs, but there has been poor response from students and parents so far.

In Gujarat University less than 300 forms are filled up with document verification against EBC quota of 3,000 seats. Gujarat University has total 30,000 seats in 8 courses including Bachelor of Commerce. Considering 10% quota, there are 3,000 seats reserved for EBC. But less than 500 forms are submitted against 3,000 seats so far. The university management was expecting submission of over 7,000 forms for 3,000 seats. Admission committee had organized seminar to propagate the procedure of admission under EBC.

In Bhuj taluka, only 125 applicants from EBC category turned up in 15 days to take benifit of 10% quota. As per the details available from local Mamlatdar office only 125 applied for EBC quota between 21 May and 6 June.

In Surat only 148 have applied for admission under EBC category. The city of Surat has around 14,000 seats in BA, BCom and BCA colleges of which about 1400 are under EBC quota, but not even 200 applications have been received. It should be mentioned that against 14,000 seats, there are 21,000 applications for admissions, but of them less than 200 are from EBC category.

It is worth noting that when Chief Minister had announced Mukhyamantri Yuva Swavlamban Yojana(MYSY) in response to quota agitations, she had said, “when we heard complains from a particular community that it faces injustice due to reservation system in government jobs, we went through the facts to check whether the community really is facing injustice in recruitment. What we found was that the community was not applying for jobs at all. There were negligible number of applications from that particular community. To get the job you have to first apply for it. Without applying for job, you can’t complain that you face injustice.” The Chief Minister was obviously referring to Patidar community.

The same behavior is now seen in college admissions. Not enough Patidars and other upper class community people are submitting applications to get benefits under EBC.

– DeshGujarat