Around 750 seats in IITs remain vacant

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) would be revising some of the unpopular courses as it faces an embarrassing situation of about 750 seats remaining vacant, little less than the total intake students in IIT- Delhi in 2011. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 25, 2011, 21:42:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) would be revising some of the unpopular courses as it faces an embarrassing situation of about 750 seats remaining vacant, little less than the total intake students in IIT- Delhi in 2011.

The vacancies are on two counts - no applications from around 13,000 students selected after Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for IITs and drop-outs after taking admission. In all, these vacant seats account for about seven percent of total admissions in IITs, a downward trend as compared to 2010.

Sanjay Dande, director if IIT-Kanpur, which conducted 2011 IIT-JEE, blamed some unpopular courses being run by the institutes for the seats remaining vacant. "Course on pulp and paper technology in Indian School of Mines (Dhanbad) has no takers. There are similar unpopular courses in other institutes also," he told HT.

Another reason for high drop-out, which Dande admitted, was students getting admission in courses of their choice in other technological institutes. The last few years has seen an education boom with several good quality technology institutes starting popular courses.

"Even after depositing initial fee (of Rs 40,000) I took my son out of IIT-Roorkee as he got a better course in National Institute of Technology," said S K Vats, whose son wasted a valuable IIT seat.

It happened because the IITs does not have a system of refund of the fees like other technical institutes and therefore, the most drop-out don't inform the IITs about their decision of opting out. In IIT records these seats are shown as filled and Dande described it a problem of individual institutes rather than Joint Admission Board, mandated to conduct IIT-JEE and give admissions.

Rajiv Kumar of IIT-Kharagpur suggested that seats, where students fail to join within a stipulated timeframe should be declared vacant and open for admissions. "IITs should also refund of the fees deposited so that seats are not unnecessarily blocked," he said.

Professor G B Reddy of IIT-Delhi and chairperson of JAB 2012 said the issue was being discussed and all the instituted covered IIT-JEE has been asked to revise or review the unpopular courses. "We have asked them to make the courses more attractive and information about them will be provided in the brochure for counseling of students who clear IIT-JEE examination next year," he told HT.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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