Not enough qualified students to fill in reserved seats - 1,100 IIT quota seats lie vacant

For the first time in its history, the IITs are faced with an unusual problem. The HRD Ministry had insisted on reserving seats in premier engineering and medical colleges as a way to ensure equal opportunity to the deprived sections of the society. But what they didn't take into account was the possibility of these seats not been filled. And this is exactly what happened. At the close of the 2009 admission session, 1,100 seats reserved for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and physically challenged are lying vacant because there weren't enough qualified candidates. Consequently, 53 seats from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) were transferred to general category candidates. As of now, the IITs have reserved only 18% of the 27% seats authorized to be reserved by the HRD Ministry of India otherwise, the number of seats lying vacant would have been even bigger. Interestingly, according to the findings of a 1993 report by Mr. P V Indiresan (ex IIT-Madras Director) and Mr. N C Nigam (ex IIT-Delhi Director), almost 50% of the reserved seats remain vacant. This can be attributed to the inability of SC/ST students to secure the minimum threshold marks. On top of that, nearly 25% of those admitted are asked to leave before the end of their studies due to poor performance.

According to official records, 36,117 SC candidates gave the IIT-JEE 2009 exam out of which 967 qualified. On the other hand, 208 ST students qualified out of the total 12,484 candidates who sat for the entrance exam. But all 1,175 SC/ST candidates did not turn up for the counselling sessions.

Now, the remaining 1,100 seats will be allotted for the preparatory course, a one year feeder class which will train quota students and equip them to qualify for the IITs. Cut-offs are to be further reduced for the selection of the candidates for the preparatory course. This is over the previous concessions already made for SC/ST candidates like lowering the entry level to as low as 50% below the last general category student's marks. In spite of this leniency, the full seat occupancy was still not achieved.

If the overall score of the last admitted general category student is 150 out of 480, a SC/ST student's aggregate cut-off after the 50% relaxation would be 75 out of 480. But now, SC/ST candidates for the preparatory courses will have it even easier as the qualifying score will be further lower by 50% which makes it a meager 37.5 marks out of 480. Hopefully, the HRD ministry will come to its sense and not create a 1980s déjà vu when IITs had been forced to admit candidates who had scored zero.