No SC/STs in six new IITs this year
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/File_No_SCSTs_in_six_new_IITs_this_year/articleshow/3362438.cms
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: The six new IITs will not have any SC/ST student this year.
The 66 vacancies for them (19 for SCs and 47 for STs) will now be fille
d next year, over and above the prescribed quota. No decision, however, has
been taken on the 68 vacant seats in the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad and 14
empty slots in IT-BHU (IT school in the Benaras Hindu University).
Meanwhile, preparatory classes in the old IITs will be larger than previous
years. The number of students admitted to the year-long preparatory course is
based on the vacancy of reserved category seats in each discipline in each IIT.
As three of the total four seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe students in the
chemical engineering stream at IIT-Delhi fell vacant, three ST students will be
admitted to the preparatory course.
Taking that logic forward, the seven old IITs will admit 163 SC students and
216 ST students to the preparatory course, according to information put out by
the joint admission board, and those seats will be considered as filled seats.
Dhande and M S Ananth, director of IIT-Madras, hence said, all the reserved
seats in the old IITs have been occupied. The preparatory course is a feeder
class; it trains quota students for a year to equip them to qualify for the
IITs. After a year, these students need to take a test and they are admitted to
the IIT only if they clear the test.
But the preparatory course will not run in the new institutions which have 66
vacant seats. Recreating the Nehruvian style of institution building, the IITs
have also decided to reach out to Indian researchers and engineers abroad to
come back and join the new IITs.
"In the 1950s, jobs were offered in canteens and offices. We have a goal of
hiring 3,000 teachers over the next three years. We have decided to reach out
to 50,000 engineers/researchers all over the world. Even if 500 come, it would
be fine," Sanjay Dhande, director of IIT, Kanpur, said after a meeting of the
IIT heads here on Wednesday.
He also said it was payback time for the seven old IITs by mentoring the six
new ones. Dhande said the vacancies of SC/STs of JEE 2008 in the six new IITs
would be made available for the admission exercise of 2009 as a one-time
measure.
