More vacancies in IITs after first round of seat allotments

The Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) on Wednesday released the second list of seat allotments for aspirants to Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), after over 630 seats remained vacant after the first round. Last year, this number stood at 600 after the first round of admissions.

All vacant seats have been reallocated to students in the second round and these students have till July 5 to confirm their admissions. This will be the third year that JoSAA will conduct seven rounds of admission to IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and other government funded technical institutes (GFTIs).

“Seats could go vacant for a number of reasons, including students not wanting the courses/department allotted to them in the first round or some who want to try their luck and get through to the institute of their choice in the second round. We have reallocated all vacant seats so the vacancy at present stands at zero,” said professor ML Sharma, organising chairman JEE-Advanced 2019, IIT Roorkee.

In some cases, lack of applications in certain reserved categories has made way for those unclaimed seats, which will be converted into general/open category seats. “In some cases, we have allotted more students to a certain category than the number of seats because conversion of seats has added more seats to the open category, which will be allotted accordingly,” said Sharma.

The number of seats going vacant in IITs has been a growing concern for authorities as well as officials from the ministry of human resource development. While 121 seats were left vacant in 2017, the figure stood at 96 the previous year. Consequently, the ministry asked IITs to consider various ways, including the option of scrapping unpopular courses, to address the problem. The number of vacant seats stood at 50 in 2015 and just three in 2014.

“Students are very clear about the courses they want to pursue their engineering in, and if they don’t get through then many try their luck next year by reapplying for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE),” said a senior professor from Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay.

First Published: Jul 04, 2019 11:34 IST