The Odisha Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution to provide 15 per cent reservation to students of government high schools for admission into medical and technical education courses of the state. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik moved the resolution.

Explaining why the need for reservation for students of the government run schools was felt, the resolution said, “After introduction of common entrance examinations like NEET (National Entrance cum Eligibility Test) and JEE (Joint Entrance Examination), the number of students from government schools and colleges of our state in these courses is getting reduced considerably. This is not due to lack of merit, rather the students are unable to fare better in these tests due to lack of proper coaching facilities.”

The government said students studying in government schools and colleges lack both physical and economic access to coaching centres. This has resulted in inequitable conditions for a majority of the students.

“In this backdrop the cabinet has resolved to reserve adequate number of seats for the students of government high schools in medical and engineering colleges of the state. A high-powered committee headed by Justice A.K. Mishra, retired judge of the Odisha High Court along with other members was constituted making necessary recommendation in this regard,” the resolution said.

The state government said, “The high power committee after thoroughly studying the situation and analysing it, has come out with the following findings and recommendations — about 86 per cent of the students in Odisha are in government schools and they get 23 per cent seats in state medical colleges and 21 per cent seats in state engineering colleges. While 12 per cent of the students studying in private schools get almost 60 per cent seats in both medical and engineering colleges.”

The resolution further said that the findings of the committee clearly show that there is inequity arising from physical and economic access to coaching institutions, which play a major role in national entrance examinations. “This inequity affects a majority of the students,” the state government said adding that the reservation would give a huge boost to talented and intelligent students who cannot have physical and economic access to coaching institutions.