Delhi University will launch a special admission cell for students from the Northeast with a nodal officer in every college. The decision was taken at the first meeting of the Admissions Committee held on Monday. The decision was taken as the varsity has not been receiving enough applications under the Schedule Tribe (ST) category of students and has been finding it hard to fill the constitutionally-mandated quota.
“Since many of the ST students are from the Northeast, the admissions cell will reach out to students of the region by contacting the Resident Commissioners of the State in Delhi and spreading information about courses and opportunities at DU. Last year, due to lack of applicants, we managed to fill only 4%-5% of the 7% seats reserved for ST students,” said M.K. Pandit, head of the Admissions Committee. Last year, at the end of the admission process, the university had to launch a special drive to attract ST applicants as seats remained empty even after cut-offs were reduced significantly. Drives will be launched in other States with high population of ST candidates as well, said the university.
OBC category
The Admissions Committee on analysing data also found that there were not many female OBC category students applying to the university and therefore several women-only off-campus colleges were finding it tough to fill seats. Therefore, it has decided to recommend to colleges to give a maximum of 2% benefit on the cut-off to OBC women applicants.
Mr. Pandit said that the committee has also recommenced to all colleges to hire a forensic expert to verify certificates relating to reserved category admission as well as sports and ECA category admissions to avoid the problem of fake certificates.
Students applying under various reserved categories have also been advised to get their certificate in order well in advance to running around in the last minute.
