Reservation in India: 60% of dropouts at 7 IITs from reserved categories

Ground Report | New Delhi: Reservation in India; The reason for the question is that after getting admission in higher educational institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) through the reservation, many such students leave their studies in the middle.

According to data presented by the central government in the Rajya Sabha this week, about 63 percent of the students who dropped out of the seven Indian Technical Institutes (IITs) in the country during the last five years belong to the reserved categories.

Reservation in India

The Union Education Ministry presented data in this regard in Parliament this week. About 40 percent of those who dropped out in the middle were from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. In some institutions, the share of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was up to 72 percent.

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It is important to mention here that about half of the students in IITs are from the reserved category. 23 percent of them come from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Dalit and tribal organizations have been arguing for a long time that the reserved category students studying in these institutions have always been under tremendous pressure and are discriminated against.

On the other hand, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told the Rajya Sabha that the main reason for the students of the reserved category leaving these institutions were not getting the department of their choice or the institutes were not liked by the students. Many times students also left their studies midway due to personal reasons.

Kerala MP V. Sivadasan had questioned the government as to what was the reason for the drop out of students in government-run technical institutions and what steps the government had taken to check it.

2,461 students of IITs dropped out of studies

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The problem of students dropping out mid-way despite admission in institutions like IITs and IIMs of reserved category students is an old one. On July 25, 2019, the then HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank told the House that during the last two years (2017-2019) 2,461 students of IITs dropped out of their studies. 

Among them, 1290 belonged to the general category and 1171 to the reserved category. The maximum number of 601 students in the reserved category were OBC, 371 students belonged to the Scheduled Castes, and 199 to the Scheduled Tribes. That is, among the students who dropped out of IIT in the middle, there was 52.4 percent of the general category, 15.07 percent of the scheduled caste, 8.08 percent of the scheduled tribe, and 24.42 percent of the OBC. 

During this period, out of 99 students who dropped out of IIMs, 37 students were from the general category and 62 students from the reserved category.

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