KATHMANDU, May 3: Protesting against the reservation quota set for the postgraduate level of medicine, the students of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) padlocked the office of the dean on Tuesday.
The IOM has allocated 20 percent of seats as reservation quota on the basis of the Tribhuvan University (TU) senate meeting held on January 4 and a directive from the Supreme Court (SC) last year. However, student unions argued that the reservation quota for postgraduate level was irrational.
“Reservations should not be implemented at any cost in the PG level meant to produce specialists to take care of people's health,” said the agitating students. A team of students led by Milan Gaire, president of the Free Students Union, padlocked the office of the IOM dean Dr JP Agrawal.
“We will take further actions if our demand is not addressed,” they warned. They have submitted a memorandum to the IOM.
Meanwhile, the IOM chapter of Nepal Students Union has also launched protest programs against the reservation.
“We just followed the decision of the TU and the direction of the SC in line with the constitution of Nepal,” said Dr Agrawal. “We have informed the TU authority about the protest,” he added. “Some non-agitating students have requested us to increase the reservation quota.”
Dr Agrawal further said that they would hold talks with the students to sort out the problem in a rational way. “We will begin discussions from tomorrow,” he said.
There are more than 600 intakes annually for MD/MS courses in the medical colleges under the TU and Kathmandu University (KU) in Nepal. The medical colleges affiliated to the IOM under the TU generally enroll 170 MD/MS new students every year. At present, the IOM, which has more than 100 seats for MD courses, has already taken entrance tests while the KU is yet to open the applications for the MD/MS courses this year.
IOM padlocked against reservation quota
