JOIN USThe government may have wanted the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to increase their intake at all levels, but most of the 23 premier technical institutes do not find the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry’s proposal feasible.
At a recent meeting, the directors of the IITs, especially those of the seven older ones, cited various difficulties in increasing the seats for admissions to B Tech and M Tech programmes, maintaining that they had increased their intake by 54% just a few years back to implement the other backward classes (OBC) quota.
Any further increase in the student intake would require more resources and facilities to maintain the institutes’ standards and quality, they pointed out.
The meeting was held at IIT-Bhubaneswar on Sunday.
“There is no scope for increasing the seat intake. That’s what most of the directors felt during the meeting when the matter was taken up for discussion. To older IITs, increasing the intake now would be very difficult as they are still making efforts to meet the requirements since the OBC quota was implemented,” official sources privy to the deliberations of the meeting told DH.
This comes within a month of the IIT Council giving its “in principle” approval to the ministry’s proposal for increasing their intake to 1 lakh by 2020 at its meeting presided over by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on August 23 here. After the meeting, Javadekar told reporters that all the IITs had been asked to send their proposals to the HRD Ministry on increasing the seat intake keeping their capacity in mind.
“The seats can be increased in future but it is not possible for most of the IITs now. Such a move would require more resources and facilities while the institutes have to invest their resources in meeting the current requirements. We still need more hostels, better laboratories and many other facilities for our students,” an official in one of the IITs said.