E-Paper
How the Supernumerary Seats Scheme changed the odds for women to study at IITs
The scheme was introduced to improve gender ratios among historically male-dominated undergraduate students
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Between 2013 and 2020, women accounted for only 7% to 9% of Bachelor of Technology (BTech) students at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), even though they comprised 28% to 29% of undergraduate engineering students across India. The proportion rose significantly to nearly 20% by 2020 and has remained around that level since, thanks to the Supernumerary Seats Scheme (SSS), which changed the odds of women studying at the 23 IITs.
The scheme was introduced in 2018 to improve gender ratios among historically male-dominated undergraduate engineering students at the IITs. It creates additional seats rather than reducing the number available to male candidates. Under the scheme, seats are divided into “female-only” and “gender-neutral” categories.
Additional seats are created for women in branch-institute combinations where their representation is below the 20% target. Programmes that already had at least 20% women representation did not require additional seats.
How the scheme reshaped IIT classrooms
The scheme has also benefited disadvantaged caste groups by increasing the representation of Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) women in IITs. Women-only seats are created within reserved categories as well. The proportion of women SC/ST candidates increased from about 12% in 2014 to about 20% in 2021, according to one IIT-level analysis.
Students say the scheme is creating a self-reinforcing effect by increasing the visibility of women in engineering. Akshaya Jha, a fourth-year BTech student at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, said the SSS is very helpful in motivating women to aim to study engineering at the IITs. “The scheme is creating a community of women engineers who will further motivate other girls to pursue higher studies in engineering.”
Over 10,000 women qualified for the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), or JEE (Advanced), from 2021-2026, coinciding with the scheme. Of 43,112 women registered for the national-level engineering entrance exam for admission to bachelor’s programmes at the IITs, 10,107 qualified, taking their qualification rate to 23.4%—the highest in six years, according to IIT Roorkee’s Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) report dated October 3.
In 2025, 9,404 women qualified out of 43,413 registrations, achieving a success rate of 21.7%. The number of women qualifiers increased by 7.5% even as registrations fell 0.7% to 43,112 in 2026. In 2026, women accounted for 23% of the 187,389 JEE (Advanced) registrations but only 17.8% of the 56,880 qualifiers. The rise in women qualifiers comes before the admission stage, where the SSS applies.
The qualification rate depends on the marks distribution among candidates and the qualifying threshold fixed for each category. “The qualifying criteria were relaxed to ensure at least twice the number of candidates qualified as compared to available seats in each category,” the JIC report said.
There was no separate qualifying cut-off for women candidates in JEE (Advanced) 2026. Women were subject to the same category-wise qualifying criteria as other candidates. The Common Rank List (CRL) cut-off in 2026 was 92 out of 360, up from 74 in 2025. The CRL is the overall merit list based on candidates’ total marks, irrespective of their category.
The impact
In 2026, women were allotted 3,814 of 18,861 IIT seats, or 20.22%, compared with 20.15% in 2025. Of these, 3,777 were allotted through women-only seats and just 37 through the gender-neutral pool. The numbers reflect the impact of SSS in increasing women’s representation in IIT undergraduate programmes to 20%.
A study by Nandana Sengupta and Ravinder Kaur of IIT Delhi and University of Houston’s Rohit Munshi, published in November 2025 in the Springer journal Higher Education, found that before SSS, women constituted 11% to 13% of JEE (Advanced) qualifiers.
A considerably smaller proportion of qualified women than men were ultimately entering IITs. The additional women-only seats helped close that gap without reducing the number of seats available.
The study found that the scheme appears to be doing more than simply increasing women’s headcount. It is changing the branches high-ranking women choose. The study found post-SSS rank gaps between women-only and gender-neutral seats are smallest for traditionally male-dominated programmes. It suggested that high-ranking women are increasingly opting for branches such as computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering.
The study noted that the finding warrants a re-examination of earlier assumptions about gendered preferences in engineering. The study argues that the presence of more women in IITs can alter perceptions about engineering as a male-dominated field and encourage other women to consider the institutions.
