10 EWS seats to ESI college caught in state-Centre row

10 EWS seats to ESI college caught in state-Centre row

Pushpa.Narayan@timesgroup.com

Chennai:12.11.2020

Addition of 25 MBBS seats at ESIC Medical College in KK Nagar, on a condition that 10 are supernumerary seats meant for economically weaker section (EWS) among forward castes, is now turning into a quota policy tussle between Tamil Nadu and the Centre.

ESIC College, affiliated to the Tamil Dr MGR Medical University, was established in 2011-12 with100 medical seats. In October this year, National Medical Commission increased the college intake from 100 to 125 because the administration agreed to the EWS quota.

As of now, the college will have 125 seats of which 19 have been surrendered for the All India Quota (AIQ) pool, which will be managed by the Centre’s director-general of health services. Another 25 seats are meant for the wards of ESI-contributing employees. While the DGHS will allot students for these 44 seats, it is Tamil Nadu’s responsibility to admit students for the 81 remaining seats through single window counselling.

However, the state selection committee in Tamil Nadu, which should admit students to the 81 state quota seats, says there will be no EWS category in its seat matrix as the state has no EWS policy.

Who, then, will allot 10 EWS seats? While DGHS will allot five seats, the remaining five have to be allotted through Tamil Nadu government’s single window scheme.

But state selection committee secretary Dr G Selvarajan said Tamil Nadu has a policy decision not to implement EWS quota. “We don’t have the category in the seat matrix. For the seats surrendered by the college, admission will be done based on merit in NEET and 69% rule of reservation,” he said.

ESIC dean Dr Sowmya Sampath refused to comment, but a senior official in the college said the administration had no role in seat allotments. “We have surrendered seats to respective agencies. Allotment has to be done by them,” the official said. Officials on the Medical Counseling Committee say they will not be able to allot more than 5 seats as it would be illegal to increase the EWS share in the respective quotas.

While seats were added on condition that 10 seats were allotted to economically weaker section (EWS) among forward castes, state authorities said they can’t comply as TN has no EWS policy