Govt approves 27% reservation for OBC, 10% for EWS in medical education programmes

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The ministry of health and family welfare has announced to provide 27% reservation for OBCs and 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) under the All India Quota (AIQ) scheme in undergraduate and postgraduate medical/dental courses (MBBS/MD/MS/Diploma/BDS/MDS) from the current academic year 2021-22 onwards.

Our Government has taken a landmark decision for providing 27% reservation for OBCs and 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Section in the All India Quota Scheme for undergraduate and postgraduate medical/dental courses from the current academic year. https://t.co/gv2EygCZ7N

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 29, 2021

This decision will benefit around 1500 OBC students in MBBS, 2500 OBC students in postgraduation, 550 EWS students in MBBS, and around 1000 EWS students in postgraduation.

AIQ scheme

The All India Quota (AIQ) scheme was introduced in 1986 as per a Supreme Court directive to provide for domicile-free merit-based opportunities to students who wish to study in a good medical college located in another state.

All India Quota consists of 15% of total available UG seats and 50% of total available PG seats in government medical colleges.

In 2007, the SC had introduced reservations of 15% for SCs and 7.5% for STs under the AIQ scheme. When the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act became effective in 2007 providing for uniform 27% reservation to OBCs, the same was implemented in all the central educational institutions- Safdarjung Hospital, Lady Harding Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University, and Banaras Hindu University, etc. However, this was not extended to the AIQ seats of state medical and dental colleges.

The government has now decided to implement the reservation scheme both to the backward category as well as the EWS category. The OBC and EWS students across the country shall now be able to take benefit of this reservation to compete for seats in any state. For this, the central list of OBCs shall be used as it is a central scheme.

Since 2014, several reforms have been carried out in the field of medical education. During the last six years, MBBS seats in the country have increased by 56% from 54,348 seats in 2014 to 84,649 seats in 2020. The number of PG seats have also increased by 80% from 30,191 seats in 2014 to 54,275 seats in 2020. Around 179 new medical colleges have been established and now the country has 558 medical colleges.