JOIN USThe Council of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) on Friday approved a proposal to create supernumerary seats for woman students to bridge the gender disparity.
At a meeting of the council held at IIT-Bombay, all 23 premier technical institutes agreed to create at least 4% additional seats for woman students, over and above the actual strength, making it 20% in the coming years.
“We decided to create supernumerary seats for woman students in the IITs,” Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar said after the meeting.
The minister, however, did not specify as to which academic session the additional seats would be created. “The council’s decision will be implemented from 2018,” an official, who attended the meeting, told DH.
The percentage of woman students at the IITs remained at just 8% last year. “About 4,500 woman students cracked the JEE-Advance but only 800 of them could get admission to the IITs. With the creation of supernumerary seats, we hope that the percentage will increase,” Javadekar said.
The council also approved another proposal to hold two additional rounds of counselling to fill up all the seats this year.
At the meeting, the council decided to make its induction programme “very strong” to help students cope up with stress in view of recent incidents of suicide at IIT-Kharagpur and Kanpur.
“The IITs get students from all the states. We do not want any student to be left alone. Therefore, we will have a very strong induction programme at all the IITs. At each of the IITs, a wellness centre will be set up to take care of students going through any stress. The induction programme will be of longer duration,” the minister said.
The council did not take any decision on the demand of the IITs to review the tuition fee waiver and concessions approved for a certain category of students last year. “The agenda item was deferred. No decision was taken on this,” an official said.