A recent rumor about the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government announcing the end of caste-based reservations in private medical and dental colleges of Uttar Pradesh was put to rest after confirming that caste-based reservations never existed in UP private medical colleges in the first place.

A decision to scrap caste-based reservations was taken by the outgoing Akhilesh Yadav-led Uttar Pradesh government but now, efforts are being put in to scrap the reservation system in all educational institutions of UP by the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government though no official decision has been made yet.

Read: Medical, engineering seats to increase in Gujarat with 10% EWS quota implementation

Previously it was mistakenly believed that the Yogi government had already passed an order to do away with the reservation quota for candidates belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC). However, authorities at the state medical education department were quick to refute the news.

"Reservation was never a part of the admission process in private sector medical and dental colleges as per the prevalent policy made in 2006. There has been no change in any policy whatsoever," VN Tripathi, the director general of medical education, told the Times of India.

The news report was first published by the India Today group with reference from Aaj Tak TV but the news went off air as soon as the mistake was realized.

Dr Tripathi told TOI that the BJP government was making efforts to regulate functioning in private medical and dental colleges following orders from the Supreme Court of India. Private medical and dental colleges had been brought under the umbrella of NEET. Seats in these colleges are now assigned based on the NEET scores of candidates.

Denying any fresh order issued by Yogi government, as claimed by news channels and sites, principal secretary, medical education, rubbished the reports as a possible act of mischief to malign the new government, the Indian Express reported.

Given that the BJP government aggressively had sought to woo SC, ST and OBC voters, the news’ that Adityanath was scrapping caste-based reservation for students is likely to have been met with malice from these groups.

Update:

In January 2019, Uttar Pradesh became the third state, after Gujarat and Jharkhand, to implement 10 percent quota for the economically weak (EWS quota) among the upper castes in government jobs and educational institutions.

The fake news regarding UP scrapping reservation in private medical and dental colleges has been circulating again in mid-2019 with a surge of fresh memes and Whatsapp messages such as the following:

Fake Memes and WhatsApp messages are going viral on Yogi government's take to demolish caste-based reservation from private medical and dental colleges in UP.

Disclaimer: This story was edited with changes after the mistake was noted. We regret the misinformation carried before and request readers to look through the updated information.