“The whole process used to be very unfair to these students; there was no question of choice regarding their course or college. It was decided instead by the central cell in theDelhi University which randomly allotted students to whichever course or college it felt like,” said Academic Council member Sanjay Kumar. “More often than not, the SC/ST students were usually allotted a course he or she did not want and it had become predictable for them to fare badly and eventually give up the course.”

Special centre:
According to the new set-up, each college will be required to set up a special centre to deal with allotment of seats for the SC/ST students. These centers will then be overseen by a central monitoring committee made up of the Executive Council and Academic Council members.

“There is a provision that unfilled SC/ST and OBC seats can be converted into general seats if they remain vacant. Several colleges were alleged to have been taking advantage of this by not allotting the reserved seats and then converting them into the general category. There were also allegations of foul play by some colleges which said that there was no basis for the allotment of seats and that there could be some understanding between the central cell and the colleges….these are all allegations but they have to be taken seriously,” he added.

Several members from the two Councils had earlier recommended decentralization to the Vice-Chancellor who had agreed in-principle to the idea, but a positive decision sealing the issue is yet to be made. “The V-C said that we had his complete support and that great injustice had been done to the SC/ST candidates. He also said that the decentralization was an attempt by the university to rectify past mistakes and that these poor students had suffered greatly only because of the rigid structure of the university's admission process,” said another Academic Council member, adding that help lines, facilitation centres and other methods of keeping a check on the issue were still being chalked out.

The University is also expected to overhaul other admission procedures like re-introducing centralized application forms which were done away with last year.

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