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Mumbai Edition, 14th Aug 2008
66 Reserved Seats Will Be Filled In 2009
New
Delhi/Mumbai: The six new IITs will not have any
SC/ST student this year. The 66 vacancies for them (19 for
SCs and 47 for STs) will now be filled next year, over and
above the prescribed quota. No decision, however, has been
taken on the 68 vacant seats in the Indian School of Mines,
Dhanbad and 14 empty slots in IT-BHU (IT school in the Benaras
Hindu University).
Meanwhile, preparatory classes in the old IITs will be larger
than previous years. The number of students admitted to the
year-long preparatory course is based on the vacancy of reserved
category seats in each discipline in each IIT. As three of
the total four seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe students
in the chemical engineering stream at IIT-Delhi fell vacant,
three ST students will be admitted to the preparatory course.
Taking that logic forward, the seven old IITs will admit 163
SC students and 216 ST students to the preparatory course,
according to information put out by the joint admission board,
and those seats will be considered as filled seats. Dhande
and M S Ananth, director of IIT-Madras, hence said, all the
reserved seats in the old IITs have been occupied. The preparatory
course is a feeder class; it trains quota students for a year
to equip them to qualify for the IITs. After a year, these
students need to take a test and they are admitted to the
IIT only if they clear the test.
But the preparatory course will not run in the new institutions
which have 66 vacant seats. Recreating the Nehruvian style
of institution building, the IITs have also decided to reach
out to Indian researchers and engineers abroad to come back
and join the new IITs. “In the 1950s, jobs were offered
in canteens and offices. We have a goal of hiring 3,000 teachers
over the next three years. We have decided to reach out to
50,000 engineers/researchers all over the world. Even if 500
come, it would be fine,’’ Sanjay Dhande, director
of IIT, Kanpur, said after a meeting of the IIT heads here
on Wednesday.
He also said it was payback time for the seven old IITs by
mentoring the six new ones. Dhande said the vacancies of SC/STs
of JEE 2008 in the six new IITs would be made available for
the admission exercise of 2009 as a one-time measure.
This year, 3.11 lakh students took the JEE for 6,992 seats
in 13 IITs. Of these, 414 seats were reserved for ST candidates,
but only 159 were shortlisted. Similarly, only 690 were shortlisted
for the 832 SC seats. The OBC figures were 1,099 out of 1,134.
The IIT directors also said all attempts are being made to
ensure the brand equity of the institutes does not get diluted.
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