MUMBAI: After quotas in admissions, there is a move to introduce quotas for living on campus too. The Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, under a financial assistance scheme, has proposed to carry out new construction and upkeep of hostels for Scheduled Caste students.
The ministry has directed all the engineering colleges in India, the ones that figure in the NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) rating, to carry out a “comprehensive” need assessment/demand survey, to calculate the number of hostels that would be required for SC candidates. Details have been sought on the number of operational hostels for SC candidates, the count of such students on their college rolls, and the gap in the availability of hostels for SC candidates, apart from land for constructing exclusive hostels for SC students.