JOIN USWith just a little over 18,000 students qualifying the JEE Advanced, the joint admission board (JAB) of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) held an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss if this would leave them with a large number of seats going vacant this year.
Though the meeting remained inconclusive, the JAB members were unanimous on a suggestion that the cut off for this year's JEE Advanced results should not further be lowered to increase the number of qualified students.
They also remained firm that the students must be admitted to the IITs only on the basis of their merit, "not just for filling up the seats."
"The members opined that the counselling for the seats should be started to see if filling of seats could be a real problem with the available number of qualified candidates as it is still an apprehension that the IITs seats would go vacant," sources privy to the JAB meeting told DH.
The JAB will hold further consultations with the HRD ministry to take a final decision on the issue.
"No decision has yet been taken. We will tell you about it tomorrow (Thursday)," HRD minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters when asked about the JAB's meeting at a press conference here.
The meeting was convened by the JAB after Javadekar sought them to ensure that seats of the premier technical institutes would not remain vacant after closing of the admission.
A total of 18,138 candidates out of 1,55,158, who appeared, qualified the JEE Advanced this year.
Of them, 2,076 qualified candidates are women. The number of candidates qualifying the test this year was the lowest in the last seven years.