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We the undersigned concerned citizens of India, express our strong displeasure at the non-implementation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation in the allocation of all-India seats to medical courses through National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). As per the admission process, private and government colleges are required to surrender 15% of their seats in the undergraduate courses to a common central pool called the All India Quota (AIQ). For postgraduate courses, the percentage of seats surrendered by these colleges to the AIQ is 50%.

Counselling for AIQ seats is administrated by the Medical Counselling Committee of the Directorate General of Health Services. Seats are allotted to the students as per their merit, category, and availability of seats in colleges.

In 2017-18, only 69 seats (1.7%) out of a total of 4,064 seats were reserved for the OBCs in the undergraduate programmes like MBBS and BDS while, as per the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, OBC candidates should have received 27%, that is, 1,097 seats.

In 2018-19, only 220 OBC candidates were admitted to postgraduate courses while they had a claim over 2,152 of the 7,982 seats. Similarly, only 66 OBC students were admitted under AIQ to the MBBS programme. There were 4,061 AIQ MBBS seats, of which 27 per cent (1,096) should have been filled with OBC candidates.

The central government is neither following its own policy of 27% reserved seats for OBCs nor the state government mandates regarding OBC reservation in the allocation of seats. This has resulted in OBCs being robbed off of 10,000 seats in the last three years.

After the reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) came into force in 2019, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had promptly increased 5,200 MBBS seats for the academic year 2019-20 to accommodate the new category. The ministry needs to show the same promptness towards OBC reservation.

We put forward the following demands:

1. The seats taken from the private and state government colleges into the AIQ must be considered as the ones sponsored by the central government and these seats should be brought under the purview of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006. As mandated in the act, OBCs should be given 27% reservation in the AIQ from the academic year 2020-21.

2. The health ministry should publish year-wise details about the number of seats allocated to OBCs in the undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses since the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 act came into force.

3. The ministry should also compensate for all the seats the OBCs have lost so far by allocating extra seats to OBCs in the upcoming rounds.

When Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and now EWS are given reservations in the AIQ both for postgraduate and undergraduate courses, denying reservations to the OBCs is a blatant violation of the Indian Constitution. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare should correct this wrong done towards the OBCs at the earliest.

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