The Hindu : New Delhi News : Unfilled SC/ST seats at IITs to be carried forward

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Unfilled SC/ST seats at IITs to be carried forward

Staff Reporter

Vacancies will be made available as a one-time measure

66 seats of the 720 total number available at the six new IITs lying vacant
New institutes facing difficulties in conducting regular classes at far away locations

NEW DELHI: The seats reserved for the candidates from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes at the six new Indian Institutes of Technology that are lying vacant this year will be carried forward to the next academic session.

An emergency meeting of the Joint Admission Board (JAB) of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) 2008 was held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, on Wednesday to consider the issue of 66 vacant seats of the 720 total number available at the six new IITs.

“Taking into account factors like infrastructure, classrooms and faculty, the JAB decided that the preparatory courses for the new IITs will start in 2009. The vacancies for the SC/ST seats this year will be made available for the admission exercise of 2009 at the six new IITs as a one-time measure,” IIT, Kanpur, Director Sanjay Dhande announced at a press conference.

He informed that the existing seven IITs have filled all their seats of JEE 2008 in the regular as well as the preparatory courses.

“Of these 66 seats, 47 are for ST candidates. It has been difficult to find ST students for IITs. Normally vacancies are converted into preparatory course. The possibility of filling up these vacancies by initiating a preparatory programme in each of these six IITs was examined,” said Prof. Dhande.

Many challenges

“The heads of many of these new IITs reported that they have surmounted many challenges in starting these institutions in a very short period of time. Even now, there are several difficulties in conducting the regular classes of these institutions at locations away from the main campuses, as well as on the campuses of the mentoring institutes. That’s why it was decided that these 66 vacancies will be topped on the vacancies next year,” he explained.

The quota for the Other Backward Classes is full at all the IITs. The older IITs were to implement 9 per cent of OBC reservation this year, while the new ones were to roll out the entire 27 per cent during this session itself, said M. S. Ananth, director of IIT, Madras.

The Government has started six new IITs from this year in Punjab, Rajasthan, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The activities of the new institutes are managed by the older institutes which are acting as mentor institutes for them.

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