IITs to lower cut-offs, fill seats
8 Aug 2008, 0001 hrs IST, Hemali Chhapia,TNN
MUMBAI: In the history of IITs, there has never been a second round of admissions. This year, though, vacant seats at all 13 IIT campuses, as also at IT-BHU and Indian School of Mines-Dhanbad, will be filled after a second list is soon put out.
After a campaign by TOI, HRD ministry met IIT chiefs on Tuesday in New Delhi and asked them to fill the empty seats. However, what comes as a shock is that the ministry is not interested in de-reserving vacant seats that were meant for SC, ST and OBC candidates. Instead, the ministry wants the premier engineering schools to dilute merit and further bring down cutoffs to admit reserved category students.
After Tuesday’s meeting, IIT-Delhi director Surendra Prasad said, “We will be taking additional students.’’
The IIT Joint Admission Board has called for an urgent meeting next week to discuss modalities of filling up seats that have gone abegging.
IIT-Madras director M S Ananth pointed out that it is ‘‘criminal’’ to take in students with cutoffs that are further relaxed. ‘‘These students will suffer and so will their self-confidence,’’ he told TOI.
This year, 3.11 lakh students took the JEE for 6,992 seats in 13 IITs and Banaras Hindu University (Institute of Technology) and ISM, Dhanbad. Of these, 414 seats were reserved for ST candidates, but only 159 students were shortlisted. Similarly, only 690 were shortlisted for the 832 SC seats. The OBC figures were 1,099 out of 1,134.
While the last general category student who got admission scored 180/489, the last SC/ST candidate secured 104.
Prep course cutoffs for SC/STs to dip by 55%
MUMBAI: For the first time in the history of IITs, a second round of admissions is on to fill vacant seats at all its 13 campuses. More students will also be accommodated in the preparatory course, which is like a feeder class that trains SC and ST students for a year to equip them to qualify for the IITs. Students need to take a test at the end of the year-long tutorial.
If they qualify, the gates of IITs are opened to them. For the preparatory course, each IIT relaxes the lowest SC and ST cutoffs by 55%. With that figure being 104 for both reserved categories this year, the preparatory course cutoff turned out to be 57 out of a total of 489. This cutoff will dip further if additional students have to be admitted.
Prasad said, “We will also begin running the preparatory course at the six new IITs from this year.’’ While this will put an additional burden on the overnight-born institutes, it will prevent a repeat of the ‘‘vacant seat’’ scenario next year as those candidates will be eligible for admission then.
The older IITs managed to fill some SC/ST seats with students who were admitted to the preparatory course in 2007, but there were no such admissions at the new IITs. This year’s sorry situation was the result of the government commissioning six new IITs (thus increasing the pool of seats by 720), which simultaneously led to the increase of quota seats (for which there were not enough eligible applicants).
Despite lowering the cutoff percentage in the name of affirmative action, not enough reserved category students could make the grade.
