1,100 quota seats in IITs not filled this yr
June 25, 2009: The Times of India
Mumbai: Every year, lakhs of students burn the midnight oil for months to get into the hallowed Indian Institutes of Technology. But as admissions closed on Wednesday, one startling fact emerged — there weren’t enough qualified candidates to fill up the reserved seats on offer for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, or the physically challenged.
IIT heads told TOI that over 1,100 seats will now be transferred to the preparatory course. This course, which is like a feeder class, trains quota students for a year to equip them to qualify for the IITs. Students for the preparatory course are selected by reducing cut-offs even further.
On the OBC (other backward classes) reservation front too, 53 seats were transferred to general category candidates, though the IITs are still only in the second year of the quotas (they are implementing 18% quota before moving to the total 27% reservation).
The IITs, in fact, had made various concessions to ensure they could fill the SC/ST seats. They lowered entry levels for these categories and even went as low as 50% below the last general category student’s marks to do justice to the quota. Even this did not help them get the required number of backward category students.
69 of top 100 opt for IIT-Bombay, Delhi’s 2nd
IIT-Bombay has become the favoured destination for engineering aspirants across India, displacing IIT-Kanpur, the place to be 10 years ago. Of the top 100 rankers in the joint entrance exam this year, 69 opted to join IIT-Bombay over any other IIT. IIT-Delhi is a distant second, with 19 of the top 100 opting for it. There are no takers for the once-prestigious Kharagpur.
‘50% of the reserved seats remain vacant’
Mumbai: Gautam Barua, director of IIT-Guwahati, has said that 1,100 seats unfilled reserved would be transferred to the preparatory programme. So, picture this: Let’s assume that the last general category student is admitted with an overall score of 150 (out of 480), and the aggregate cut-off for an SC/ST student would be 75 (after a 50% relaxation). To select students for the preparatory course, the IITs will further lower the qualifying score by another 50% (37.5 marks).
For the record, out of 36,117 SC candidates, 967 qualified after the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). Similarly, of the 12,484 ST candidates who took the gruelling entrance exam, 208 qualified. However, even of those who qualified, not everyone turned up for counselling (when students list their preferences for institutes and streams).
A 1993 report by ex-IITMadras director P V Indiresan and ex-IIT-Delhi director N C Nigam had dwelt on impact of quotas in IITs. ‘‘Nearly 50% of the reserved seats remain vacant as SC/ST students are unable to secure the minimum threshold marks. Of those admitted, almost 25% are asked to leave due to poor performance,’’ the report said. A former IIT-Kharagpur director said the increase in SC/ST seats was likely to recreate the scenario of 1980s when government had forced the IITs to admit those who had even scored zero.
