Jadavpur University engineering departments want domicile reservation

KOLKATA: The Jadavpur University faculty council of engineering departments has decided to reserve 90% seats for domicile candid ates. The resolution will now be forwarded to the executive council, the highest administrative decision-making body in the university, in its next meeting on March 18. If ratified by the EC, the proposal will be sent to the state government for approval.

There are approximately 1,200 engineering seats in JU, out of which 45% is for reserved candidates. “The domicile reservation will be applicable on the remaining seats,” said a university source.

At the Board of Studies of individual engineering faculties, 13 departments had agreed to introduce domicile reservations while two — electronics and telecommunication and power engineering — went against the proposal. The opinion of one of the most coveted departments — computer science and engineering — remained spilt.


The departments that turned the proposal down found no reason to tinker with the tradition. “According to the departments, the diversity among students has allowed the university maintain its academic excellence over the years. So, they are not interested to reserve majority of the seats for domicile candidates,” said a source.

The 13 departments that have accepted the proposal, on the other hand, have opined that since JU is a state-run university and accepts several funds from the state government along with other sources, it is prudent to keep more seats reserved for candidates from Bengal. “Many departments argued that several other premier state-run technology institutes outside Bengal had also introduced similar reservations for domicile candidates,” added the source.

Most of the 13 departments had proposed between 75% and 100% domicile reservation in the engineering seats. The Faculty Council decided on 90% in Wednesday’s meeting.

Officials of the computer science and engineering department, the sole department that has remained undecided, mentioned that majority of the students studying were from Bengal. “To bag a seat in the prestigious computer science and engineering department, candidates mostly have to secure a rank within the top 100 in the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations (WBJEE). Going by the records, most top rankers in WBJEE are from Bengal,” the source pointed out.

“We will fix the modalities after a go-ahead from the state government. We will also have to define the term ‘domicile’. We may include the central government employees under the definition. Also, we will have to decide what will be the status of refugees and those who may have shifted outside the state after living in Bengal for a long time,” the source added.

Though the faculty council has decided to implement the domicile reservation from 2019-2020 academic session, it is unlikely to be done so soon, informed a senior faculty member who attended Wednesday’s meeting.