IITs to add 460 more seats in 2017

Starting this year, more engineering aspirants will be able to achieve their dream of studying at India’s top engineering institutes, the IITs.  IITs are all set to increase their number of seats by 460, which will take the total number of seats to 11,032.

The increase in the number of seats will be initiated at the new IITs, which are, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, Ropar, Indore, Patna, Jammu, Mandi and Bhubaneshwar. These IITs have sent their proposals to increase the number of student intake to the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Board.

JEE officials said that the most probable outcome is that the number of seats increased in the 2022- 2022 academic session is declared once the senate clears the proposal. Y Udaykumar, the coordinator of the joint seat-allocation authority of the IITs and NITs, said that this move from the IITs is a good sign meaning that they have managed to improve their infrastructure and are capable of admitting more students now. 

There are still some IITs like IIT Dharwad, IIT Goa and IIT Tirupati, which still function out of rented infrastructure and have not succeeded at accommodating more students. Old IITs have not proposed an increase in the student intake. However, there is one obstacle in this move; some IITs are moving to scrap unpopular courses, many seats of which will go vacant.

An official said that the HRD Ministry in its meeting on February 3 gave its nod for scrapping the unpopular courses, to prevent the many seats from going vacant.
The HRD Ministry has also asked all centrally funded technical institutes which are participants in the joint counselling, to review their student intake and seat increase only after a proper review of the vacant seats, opportunities of employment, National requirements, and the faculty and infrastructure capabilities.