Jadavpur University will implement 90 per cent domicile quota for admission of general category students to BTech courses from the 2019-20 academic session.

The state higher education department has decided that 90 per cent domicile quota will be implemented while allotting general category seats in the university’s 16 BTech courses, Malayendu Saha, the chairman of the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination Board, said while announcing the JEE 2019 results on Thursday.

Copies of the notification confirming the implementation of the domicile policy from the current academic session was sent to the board by the higher education department, Saha said.

The criteria that need to be fulfilled to become eligible for domicile quota seats were spelt out in the information bulletin of the JEE 2019.

“Only those candidates will be treated as domicile of West Bengal who are either, a) residing in West Bengal continuously for at least for 10 (ten) years as on 31.12.2018; b) whose parent (s)is/ are permanent resident(s) of West Bengal having permanent addresses within the State of West Bengal,” the rules read.

Until 2018, the engineering seats for general category students in the state-funded Jadavpur University were open for students from all states.

The move to reserve 90 per cent of the seats for “home students” were proposed by the university’s faculty council last year. The rationale for the reservation was that students from Bengal were being outnumbered by candidates from other states in the engineering courses.

The JEE board had expressed fear that implementation of the domicile policy in the engineering courses from this year would invite legal complications as the proposal to introduce the quota was announced after the candidates had filled in the JEE forms.

The board wanted introduction of the domicile policy from the 2020 session.

The higher education department overruled legal constraints cited by the JEE board and asked it to introduce the quota rule from this year itself.

Jadavpur University vice-chancellor, Suranjan Das, who had initially struck down the domicile quota proposal on the ground that a university should not shut its door on deserving candidates, said a copy of the government notification had reached the university.

“The policy was accepted by the executive council long back. Admissions to the engineering courses will be held according to the government’s domicile policy,” Das told Metro.