Hill Students of Bidhan Chandra Krishi College (BCKC) in Mohanpur have been left outraged over the alleged misuse of the seat reserved for “hill tribes” in the college.
According to the hill students, who are currently studying there, the College would have 2 seats reserved for the hill tribes under GTA quota for the B.Sc Honours course.The 2018-19 admission notification for the same reads, “Two (2) seats for B.Sc.(Hons.)Ag. for Mohanpur campus are kept reserved for the students belonging to Hill Tribe Quota sponsored by GTA, Darjeeling, West Bengal.”
As per the students who are presently studying at BCKC, the term “Hill Tribe Quota” has silently been changed to “Hill Quota”, and thus non hill tribe students are also getting admissions through the quota, while the actual students belonging to the “hill tribe” category are getting rejected.
In a recent case, the students alleged that one Soumili Nayak, a resident of Sukna is provisioned to get admission under the Hill Quota. It is to be noted that the term “hill tribes” schedules specific castes under the Gorkha Community in the Hills. Soumili Nayak is apparently a non-tribal and certainly a non-hill tribal. This strategic change of the “Hill Tribe Quota” to “Hill Quota” and thus inclusion of non-hill resident or non-hill tribals in the admission process has rattled the students.
One of the complaints registered with BCKC admission office
A Gorkha PhD scholar from the same college expressed his firm protest against the planned move to deprive the Gorkha Students of their rights and said, “We ourselves could study in this college because of the 2 seats that would be reserved for the Hill Tribes. The outsourcing of these the seats to non hill-tribe students is very worrisome and we will firmly protest against it. We tried to reach the administration regarding the issue, but we were told that they had no role to play in it. They could only entertain the names they were provided by the GTA as the reserved seats for Hills fell under their authority.”
As alleged by the students, “the admission of the reserved seats under Hill Quota is managed and processed by the GTA, as this process of outsourcing the seats has a definite role of GTA in it.”
It is also to be noted the college would earlier have 2 additional seats reserved in Dairy Science for Hill tribes, which slowly went on to vanish. They are now under a constant worry about the 2 remaining reservations in B.Sc agriculture, which is already seeing a change in dimension.
“Tomorrow, none of our brothers and sisters may have a chance to pursue higher education in the college if this scenario went on to continue,” said one of the students.
We tried to reach out to the authorities at GTA Education department for comments, but couldn’t connect.
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