Staff Reporter
| 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Communities demanded |
BITTER PILL: Students of K.A.P.Viswanatham Medical College forming a human chain in Tiruchi on Tuesday. — Photo: M. Moorthy.
TIRUCHI : Doctors and medical students formed a human chain in front of K. A. P. Viswanatham Medical College Hospital here on Tuesday, pressing for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Communities (OBCs) in higher educational institutions, even as their counterparts in the northern States are fighting against such a move by the Centre.
Shouting slogans seeking social justice and urging the Central Government to promulgate an ordinance to ensure reservation for Backward and Oppressed Classes, medical students and members of the Doctors' Association for Social Equality, Tamil Nadu Government Doctors' Association, Indian Medical Association and Association of Physicians of India, lauded the Union Human Resource Minister, Arjun Singh, for initiating the move.
They also questioned the rationale behind the alternative idea suggested by campaigners of anti-reservation to go in for reservation based on economic criteria. Insisting that it was a concerted move by those communities enjoying the advantages so far to usurp the benefits, the demonstrators insisted that the deserving section of the society was already suffering owing to the surrender of 50 per cent of the 900 P.G. medical seats to the Central pool.
"Only the influential candidates are able to secure P.G. admissions. It is above the means of socially backward communities to gain entry," explained M. A. Aleem, district unit Joint Secretary of the Tamil Nadu Government Doctors' Association. There is also no clarity about whether reservation norm is followed in the UG admissions to the 15 per cent of 1,950 seats allotted for students from other States.
"Nevertheless, a majority of the Undergraduate students in Government Medical Colleges in Tamil Nadu are beneficiaries of the 69 per cent reservation policy followed by Tamil Nadu. But for the concession, hundreds of intelligent, but economically backward rural students would not have entered the portals of medical colleges," said K. Muthukumar, vice-president, Doctors' Association for Social Equality.
He blamed the media in the northern States for magnifying the anti-reservation propaganda.
Students of the Periyar group of Institutions also took part in the human chain, along with S. Gnanathilagan, district unit president of the Indian Medical Association, and M. Gunasekaran, district unit president of Association of Physicians of India.
Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
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