TNN,
Pune Edition, 08th Aug 2008
Mumbai: The last general category student
who got admission in the IIT scored 180, while the last
scheduled caste and scheduled tribe candidate secured 104.
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 IITs’ gates are opened
to them. For the preparatory course, each IIT relaxes the
lowest SC and ST cut-offs by 55%.
With that figure being 104 for both reserved categories
this year, the preparatory course cut-off turned out to
be 57 out of a total of 489. This cut-off will dip further
if additional students have to be admitted.
IIT-Delhi director Surendra 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 simply not enough eligible
applicants). Despite lowering the cut-off percentage in
the name of affirmative action, enough reserved category
students did not made the grade.
This year, 3.11 lakh students took the joint entrance exam
for 6,992 seats in 13 IITs and Benaras Hindu University
(information technology school) and Indian School of Mines,
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.
