Over 330 engineering seats dereserved in Goa this year

Admissions to the professional degree courses in Goa officially came to an end on September 30, 2014. It has come to light that the number of seats available for the candidates belonging to the general category nearly doubled during the admission process. In majority of the streams, the seats reserved for candidates of Other Backward Classes (OBC), raised this year, did not find any takers.

The state government had taken a policy decision in 2014 to increase the OBC quota from the earlier 19.5% to 27%, following which the revised chart of reservation of engineering seats saw the general quota going below the Supreme Court stipulated 51%.

Official sources said that the additional seats added to the reserved categories have gone full in case of the state-funded Goa Engineering College, and only those in private institutes have remained vacant due to what appears to be fee considerations.

The dereservation of seats nearly doubled the chances of general category students of bagging an engineering seat with over 330 added to the 384 seats which were already available to students in the general category. Students in the general category did cease the opportunity with seats in the favourite engineering streams like mechanical, electrical and civil engineering being filled up. But over 190 seats of the 1292 seats available in the five engineering colleges in Goa have still gone vacant this year with seats in less preferred institutes like Rayeshwar Institute of Shiroda finding few takers even after the dereservation.

This year, the state has wandered away from the universally accepted pattern of seat reservation by providing for sub-reservations in the general, ST and SC quotas for categories of physically handicapped, children of freedom fighters and Goan natives, most of which remained vacant.

The general category seats were down by 59 in the revised reservation chart of 2014 from last year, after the state government raised the reservation quota for OBC to 27%.