Several premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), including IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur, have failed to meet this year’s target for admitting women students, while others such as IIT Tirupati, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, and IIT Kanpur have exceeded the mandated enrolment.
The details were revealed in the JEE (Advanced) 2025 admission report, released by IIT Kanpur, the organising institute for this year’s examination.
To address the long-standing gender imbalance across IITs, the IIT Council had mandated that at least 20% of seats be filled by women students, in addition to reserving a number of supernumerary seats.
This year, counselling and allocation of seats were conducted by the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) on the basis of JEE (Advanced) ranks. According to the report, admissions have been finalised to 18,188 seats across the 23 IITs—slightly higher than the sanctioned strength of 18,160, owing to the addition of 18 seats for women candidates.
Of the total admissions, 3,664 students are women. However, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, IIT Bhubaneswar and IIT Ropar did not meet the 20% benchmark. In contrast, IIT Tirupati recorded the highest proportion of women students at 21.57%. IIT Kanpur figured among the top six institutes in terms of higher female enrolment.
Director, IIT Kanpur director Manindra Agarwal said, “The number of women admitted to IIT Kanpur this year has exceeded the mandated target. Over the past few years, there has been a clear rise in women’s inclination towards engineering, which is reflected in the admissions data.”
{{/usCountry}}Director, IIT Kanpur director Manindra Agarwal said, “The number of women admitted to IIT Kanpur this year has exceeded the mandated target. Over the past few years, there has been a clear rise in women’s inclination towards engineering, which is reflected in the admissions data.”
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