FYJC admission chaos: Mumbai colleges, parents worried as 58,000 minority seats lie vacant

With the Bombay high court allowing minority-run junior colleges to surrender their quota seats only after centralised admission process (CAP), over 58,000 first-year junior college (FYJC) seats from the quota are lying vacant in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

Several colleges run by the linguistic and religious minorities in MMR are now worried about seats lying vacant after being blocked by the quota rule even as there is huge demand for the seats.

“We get a lot of enquiries for admission from several top scorers but cannot help because all the seats that are currently vacant are in the minority quota which would be opened up by the end of four rounds. Many students have to give up on good colleges due to the changed rule,” said Chaitaly Chakraborty, principal, Thakur College Kandivli.

The Nagpur bench of Mumbai High Court had, in its interim order dated July 12, asked the government to allow minority colleges to fill their minority, in-house and management quota seats till the end of the CAP rounds.

After the order, vacant seats under the various quotas which were earlier surrendered and converted into general seats in the next round of admissions were given back to the colleges, thus changing the entire seat matrix.

After the intervention of a few parents and a Mumbai based educational institute, the bench later allowed minority colleges to surrender their in-house quota seats - for students from schools attached to the colleges - which added about 7,000 seats to the general category.

The court however gave no relief for minority quota seats. “The current situation is a big blow for meritorious students who are losing out on their well-deserved opportunities for no fault of theirs,” said the principal of a south Mumbai college.

With the next hearing of the court scheduled after more than a week, minority quota seats are most likely to remain inaccessible in the centralised admission process.

The parents of children who want them to get admission into these minority colleges said that the state education department should clear how these seats will be allocated.

“Many students with 90 percent and above marks were waiting to get admission into the minority colleges but couldn’t get a seat because of the new matrix. Now we are scared about admissions to vacant seats being done on first come, first serve basis as that would put those with lower merit into top colleges,” said Pankaj Jain, parent of a FYJC aspirant from Malad.

The third merit list will be declared at 11am on Tuesday.

First Published: Jul 30, 2018 12:28 IST