IITs and NITs have to eliminate the unpopular courses and streams and have to reduce their seats, a committee set up to implement measures to minimize vacant seats in renowned government colleges. For not joining their courses, the committee also suggested imposing penalty on the students.
Three months ago a three-member panel was set up by the HRD ministry. Earlier, the panel has suggested that since that the JEE (Main) rank is no longer calculated on the basis of Class XII marks, the joint seat allocation can start earlier.
Last year despite conducting six rounds of joint counseling for the IITs, NITs and other centrally funded technical institutions, close to 3,000 seats went vacant. Out of the total of 3000 seats, 73 seats were vacant at the IITs, while the NITs had 1518 empty seats.
According to sources in the HRD Ministry, the recommendations of the committee will be kept before the IIT and NIT Council for consideration and approval.
According to the HT report, all the institutes participating in the joint seat allocation may revise the number of seats in each course, and if required, some courses may be shut down and new areas can be introduced.
The report also stated that only after a proper requirement analysis the new courses should be introduced. The panel has also suggested that for late withdrawal or not joining even after the academic session begins, the institutes must impose penalty (minimum 50% of the seat acceptance fees) on students, in order to minimise the number of vacant seats.
The committee also suggested the NITs to convert the state quota seats to general seats if the seats go vacant despite multiple counseling rounds. Presently, all the NITs reserve 50 percent seats for home state candidates.
More than 1500 seats went vacant across 31 NITs with even sought-after institutions like NIT Surat and NIT Jalandhar having 115 and 110 vacancies, respectively. According to sources, seats at NITs in the North-Eastern states usually fall vacant because the state quota remains underutilised.
According to the sources, the panel said that “Based on actual vacancies found on joining and an analysis that there are seats vacant which students may have wanted but did not get (based on their original choices), a fresh allocation round may be completed within a week, which may include fresh registration of current and new interested students. This may be completed before classes start.”
