Goa should not be clubbed with UTs: Parrikar on IIT quota

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today expressed dissatisfaction over Goa being pooled with other Union Territories (UTs) for reserved seats at the IIT here and pitched for raising the state's quota to 50 per cent.
"We are getting 50 per cent reservation for local population (in the newly set up IIT Goa). But strangely, I feel that at the central level there is still a mentality that they don't believe that Goa is a separate state," Parrikar said referring to the 50 per cent reservation of seats at the premier institute which Goa will have to share with Daman, Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

He was speaking at the inauguration of IIT Goa campus in the presence of Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.
"They (Centre) somehow club it with other small Union Territories like Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli. They have said 50 per cent for all this," the former Goa chief minister said.
"I don't think it is fair (for) Goa to be treated almost like a non-state. We are a state, therefore, we should be given 50 per cent reservation. May be 40 per cent to Goa and 10 per cent to others (UTs)," Parrikar, a former Goa CM, said.
Referring to Javadekar's announcement that the number of students at IITs had touched 10,000 this year, Parrikar said, "As a (former) student of IIT, I feel 10,000 is pretty huge a number. Quality gets sacrificed ... As we increase the quantity.

"We can make it into 20,000 but it cannot be in geographic progression but in arithmetic progression. We have to mentor institutes for at least 15-20 years. If IIT Bombay is taken away from IIT Goa (as its 'mentor' institute) in 2-3 years, I think you would be doing grave injustice to us by leaving us with one engineering college called as IIT, I don't want that," he said.