Due to recent ruling over OBC quota by Supreme Court, our institute will see increased number of students on the campus in coming years. As per the ruling, all central govt. professional education institutes, including IITs and IT-BHU will have to admit more students at undergraduate (B. Tech.) level. Although the ruling is for admissions to undergraduate course only, there is a possibility that the central govt. on its own, may ask the colleges to admit more students (due to OBC quota) for post-graduate courses also. In that case, the current admission of rate about 200 students per year for M. Tech. program will increase to 300 students. We will discuss here only the undergraduate scenario.
Currently there is a reservation for Schedule Caste for 15% of seats and for Scheduled Tribes at 7.5% of seats for admission to B. Tech. programs at IITs and IT-BHU. There is also a reservation up to 3% for Physically Handicapped students, but it is hardly used as sufficient number of students with the prescribed qualification is not available. Thus we have 100 – (15 + 7.5) = 77.5% of seats available for students under General Category (GC).
With Supreme Court ruling, an additional 27% of the seats shall be reserved for students belonging to OBC (Other Backward Class) category. Thus the GC students share will fall to 100 – (15 = 7.5 + 27) = 50.5 %. The % of 27 for OBC students was arrived from the earlier Supreme Court declaration that % of seats available for GC students shall not be less than 50% of the total seats available for admission. The court has also ruled that number of seats available for GC students under new ruling shall not be less than the one available earlier. This can only be achieved by overall increase in the number of seats.
Academic year of 2007-08 shall be considered as base year for calculation of available seats and additional seats needed. Since it takes time to develop infrastructure (hostels, lecture halls, labs, etc.) and hire more faculty, the quota will be implemented over a period of next 3 years. Thus all IITs and IT-BHU have agreed in a recent meeting with HRD Ministry to increase 9% seats under OBC category, reaching 27% at the end of 3 years. This will require increase in total number of available seats to 13%, 31% and 54%. There is little math involved in this calculation.
Suppose there are 100 students admitted in 2007-2008. SC = 15; ST = 7.5; GC = 77.5
For the year 2008-09, 9% OBC students admitted. SC = 15; ST = 7.5; OBC = 9; GC = 68.5
To keep the number of GC students same, increase total numbers to (77.5/68.5) x 100 = 113%, i.e. 13% increase in 1st year… and so on.
In the academic year 2007-08, a total of 600 students were admitted to B. Tech program. The estimated increased number of students due to implementation of OBC quota is as follows:
| Academic year | General Category | SC | ST | OBC | Overall % increase | Total available seats |
| 2007-08 | 465 | 90 | 45 | 0 | 0 | 600 |
| 2008-09 | 465 | 102 | 51 | 60 | 13% | 678 |
| 2009-10 | 465 | 118 | 59 | 144 | 31% | 786 |
| 2010-11 | 465 | 140 | 69 | 250 | 54% | 924 |