Guwahati colleges ask students to specify caste in admission form, face backlash
- Aug 19, 2021,
- Updated Aug 19, 2021, 11:42 PM IST
GUWAHATI: Three renowned colleges of Guwahati have been facing backlash from citizens for coming up with a category of “Community” in its admission form.
The Guwahati colleges are Handique Girls’ College, Karmashree Hiteswar Saikia College and Arya Vidyapeeth college located in the heart of the city.
In its admission form for Three Year Degree course, these three colleges have introduced a category wherein students are asked to identify themselves against their castes, e.g. Brahman, Ganak, Kalita, Kayastha, Muslim, Others, Sudra and Vaishya.
The Students’ Federation of India, Kamrup (Metro) District Committee has slammed such act of the colleges and has alleged that adding that particular category in the admission forms is purely communal. It has demanded scrapping of the category immediately.
ALSO READ: Detention camp renamed as Transit camp in Assam
Normally the college admission forms have a section for filling out the category - whether they belong to Scheduled Tribes (ST), Scheduled Caste (SC), General or Other Backward Classes (OBC) purely for the purpose of seat reservation and scholarship. Likewise there is a category for minority students for the same purpose. But other than that asking to mention sub-castes like Brahmin, Kalita, and others in the admission forms of the mentioned colleges is a matter of concern," it added.
When InsideNE contacted, Dr. Sikhamoni Konwar, Principal of Karmashree Hiteswas Saikia College, she however put the blame on vendor which was given the contract of creating the admission forms.
“The college did not give any instruction of specifying castes of the students in the category of ‘Community’. It was the vendor who put it at his own will. The college contacted the vendor to make a simple, hassle free admission form and upload it in the college website as the mode of form fill-up process will be online. I have asked the vendor to correct the mistake.”
Reacting to such acts by three reputed colleges in Guwahati, RSS leader and BJP spokespersons Ranjib Kumar Sharma said, “The colleges need to re-think their decision. A college is run by a management committee and each college is autonomous. The admission process is handled by the colleges themselves. There is no role of the government in this.”
After the backlash, Arya Vidyapeeth College, in a clarification notice in its website has stated that that the whole issue was a technical snag and that the mistake has been clarified in the admission form.
[caption id="attachment_100090" align="alignnone" width="750"]