A New Sea of Changeâ€â€Reserved Category Students' Participation Surpass General Category Students' in JEE-Main
According to the latest news, this year in 2014 over half of the JEE applicants who will finally sit to write JEE-Main belong to the reserved quota. Conducted every year by CBSE, JEE-Mains is the qualifying test given by engineering aspirants to seek admission in the hallowed engineering institutions of IITs.
One more report on this news suggests that caste arrangement of JEE-Main applicants has undergone a tremendous upheaval in the past few years. Let’s refer to the table given below for more clarifications:
| Total Number of JEE-MainApplicants  (In Lakhs) | Total Number of OBCCategory Applicants(In Lakhs) | Total Number of SC Category Applicants  (In Lakhs) |
Total Number of ST Category Applicants (In Thousand) | Total Number of Reserved Category Applicants (In Lakhs) | Total Number of GeneralCategory Applicants(In Lakhs) |
| 13.57 | 4.7 | 1.36 | 56,000 | 6.7 | 6.9 |
“This year, an almost equal number of open and reserved category students will write the exam. The number of OBC candidates is rising and we feel their performance is improving with each passing year. Moreover, there may be several OBC candidates within the general category pool as they may belong to the creamy layer,” a CBSE official was quoted as saying.
The number of OBC category students has grown from just 20% of the total in 2011 to 35% of the total in 2014.
“We have noticed over the years that several OBC candidates vie for seats from within the general category and do not need reservation,” an IIT faculty member said.
In fact, the gender breakup of JEE-Main applicants has also undergone a major upheaval this year with about 27% female candidates of the total JEE-candidates applying for the exam. There are 3.63 lakhs female JEE-Main candidates.
Candidates applying for the exam in both electronic and paper-pen mode make a huge difference this year as well. Refer to the table given below:
|  | Date | Number ofCandidates |
| Paper-Pen Mode Exam | April 6th, 2014 | 11.85 |
| Computer-Based or Electronic Mode Exam | April 9th, 11th, 12th, and 19th, 2014 | 1.72 |
Believe It or Not!! Reservation Haunts the Lower Castes not The Students of General Category
This post was published by Aditya Singhal, co-founder of askIITians.
While going through the new statistics I feel it is not the OBC category improving in their quality but many from General category are changing to OBC to get the benefit. I feel the reservation with caste system should be taken away and should be based on income basis only. Give previlage to low socio-economic children by giving quality education from the beginning, not by promoting them even with low quality at higher classes. This only makes low qualified students to enter prestigious insitutes.