Moving quickly to bring an end to the quota imbroglio, the government on Monday announced a 13-member committee headed by senior Congress member of Parliament Veerappa Moily to look into the issue of implementation of 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in higher education institutions and requirements for increasing seats without reducing the number in the general category.

• The Reservation Issue 

Approved by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images], the Oversight Committee with secretaries from the ministries of Human Resources Development, Health and Family Welfare, Agriculture and Finance, has been asked to submit its report by August 31, 2006.

The committee includes B Mungekar, member, Planning Commission; R Mashelkar, director general, CSIR; S K Thorat, UGC chairman; R A Yadav, vice chairman, AICTE; N K Ganguly, director general, ICMR; G Mohan Gopal, former VC, National Law School and R V Vaidyanatha Ayyar, former secretary.

Simultaneously, the government also appointed three groups to go into specific details about universities and institutes regarding the course of action for giving effect to the OBC quota in a time-bound manner.

Under the terms of reference, the groups will identify the courses at undergraduate and post-graduate level in each of the institutions and universities and student intake for the academic session 2007-08.

The groups have also been asked to identify the total number of OBCs and consequently to other categories in each course.

The groups will identify for each course, the increase in the total number of seats so as to maintain the total availability of seats in the unreserved category and determine the requirement of faculty and other infrastructure for the enhanced intake and also determine the additional requirement of recurring and non-recurring expenditure.

Among other things, the groups will suggest measures, in short term, to be taken by each institute for the enhanced intake from the academic session 2007-08 and any other preparatory or consequential steps required to be taken in order to implement the policy of reservations.

The groups will submit their recommendations by July 31.

The Group for Technological/Engineering institutions will be headed by M Anandakrishnan, former vice chancellor of Anna University. It will have Sanjay Dhande, director, IIT, Kanpur; S K Dube, director, IIT, Kharagpur; Sanjeev Bhargava, director, IIT, Jabalpur; R P Dahiya, director, NIT, Jaipur; N Balakrishnan, IISc; Y V Rao, director, NIT Warangal; I M Mishra, IIT, Roorkee; and Indira Rajaraman, NIPFP as its members.

Headed by Samuel Paul, former director of IIM, Bangalore, the group for Management institutions will have Bakul Dholakia, director, IIM, Ahmedabad; Krishna Kumar, director, IIM, Kozhikode; Shekhar Chaudhury, director, IIM, Kolkata; S D Awale, director, NITIE, Mumbai; and Devi Singh, director, IIM, Lucknow as its members.