New Delhi: As many as 13,626 reserved category students from the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC), dropped out of top academic institutions in the country in the past five years, Union minister of state for education minister Subhas Sarkar informed Parliament on Monday.

These institutions include central universities (CUs), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the minister said.

The data was submitted in response to a question by BSP member in Lok Sabha Ritesh Pandey about the government’s assessment of the total number of students who had dropped out of CUS, IITs, IIMs and NLUs during the last five years.

In the case of CUs, Sarkar said that as many as 4596 OBC, 2424 SC, and 2622 ST students dropped out in the last five years; in case of IITs, 2066 OBCs, 1068 SC, and 408 ST students dropped out; and, in case of IIMs, the figures were 163, 188, and 91 for OBC, SC and ST students, respectively.

No such data is available for national law universities or NLUs.

“NLUs have been established under the Acts enacted by the respective state legislatures and as such they are the state universities. No such data on drop out students of NLUs is maintained by the Central Government,” Sarkar said in his response.

Explaining the possible reason behind the drop outs, Sarkar said that in the higher education sector students have multiple options and they choose to migrate across institutions and from one course or programme to another in the same institution. “The migration/withdrawal, if any, is mainly on account of securing seats by the students in other departments / institutions of their choice or on any personal ground,” he said.

Responding further to the query on what the government was doing to address the issue, Sarkar said that the government had taken various steps like fee reduction, establishment of more institutes, scholarship, priority access to national level scholarships to aid the students with poor financial backgrounds to pursue their education.

“For the welfare of SC/ST students the schemes like ‘waiver of tuition fees in IITs’, grant of national scholarships under Central Sector Scheme, scholarships in Institutes etc. are also there,” he said.

Sarkar said that in order to proactively address any issues of SC/ST students, institutes have set up mechanisms such as SC/ST students’ cells, equal opportunity cells, student grievance cells, student grievance committees, students social clubs, liaison officers and liaison committees.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) also issues instructions from time to time to promote equity and fraternity among students, he said.