August 15: The Mithibai College management has admitted that it kept the Vocational Education and Training Department in dark about the admission of three students under the management quota to its electronics course. The admission of guilt came after the department instituted an inquiry into the lapse.

The management's plea that the admissions were in accordance with a government circular allowing minority institutions to admit students under minority quota was rejected by the department.

The department insisted that it must be informed about all admissions. ``Consequences of such an irresponsible action can be very serious...admissions of the students enrolled without our knowledge can be declared null and void,'' a senior official of the department said.

Repeated attempts to contact Pravin Gandhi, secretary, Vile Parle Kelavani Mandal (VPKM), which runs the Mithibai College, were in vain.

The department's castigation of the college, meanwhile, has given a new impetus to the debate on the confusion in colleges about theapplication of various quotas.

The Mumbai Junior College Teachers Union (MJCTU) secretary, M R Andhalkar, told Express Newsline that the union would request the government to come out with guidelines on different quotas within the fifty per cent reservations for minority institutions.

For example, at the Mithibai College this year, in the first-year junior college, 79 per cent of the students are Gujarati in both science and commerce streams.

This has happened because Gujarati students also take admissions in the open category and in other reserved categories like government and sports quotas.

``Taking advantage of the quotas, minority community students are swamping sought-after minority colleges like Mithibai,'' Andhalkar said.

Not only are these reserved categories exploited fully, rules are bent to suit managements. A man whose child could not get admission into the N M College of Commerce despite having a high score revealed that the college has a special quota for students of the Gokalibai School, also run by VPKM. As per a government notification, N M can't give Gokalibai's students preferential treatment as the school is not located within the college compound.

Also, Gokalibai is a Gujarati medium school, hence its students should be accommodated in the 50 per cent Gujarati quota. At N M College of Management also, 68 per cent of the students are Gujaratis.

Andhalkar pointed out there are more minority colleges than general colleges in the city, while compared to the number of minority students, there are more general category students. In the last three years alone, 30 colleges have been given minority status.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.