IITs to up seat count to have 14% girls on each campus

KOLKATA: The Union HRD ministry has directed all IITs to increase the number of admissions so as to ensure that each and every IIT campus has at least 14% girls in every new batch starting from 2018. The 23 campuses that will have to follow this directive include the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad. 

The HRD ministry's directive is part of a larger plan to increase the proportion of female representation to 20% at India's premier engineering colleges by 2026.

"The seats will be supernumerary," explained an official. "The IITs can increase the number of seats in a way that girls form a 14% chunk of the total admissions in 2018 without reducing the number of boys who were admitted in 2017," he added.

Priority to be given in Class 12 revaluation for IIT aspirants

The HRD (Human Resource Development) ministry has asked the state education boards to give priority to the revaluation applications of Class 12 students who aspire to be an engineer so that they get an equal shot in India's  top engineering colleges including IITs.
According to newspaper reports, there have been instances where after the revaluation, students' scores have improved dramatically, affecting their overall ranking. If the revaluation of Class 12 papers of engineering aspirants is delayed, they miss the opportunity to secure admission to reputed colleges.The marks obtained by students in Class 12 have a huge impact in getting admissions in IITs and NITs as 40 percent weightage is given to board scores. Millions of students take the joint entrance examination, or JEE, every year for admissions to NITs and other colleges.

HRD Ministry wants JEE Main, JEE Advanced to be combined as one exam

Human Resource Department (HRD) Ministry wants to combine JEE Main and JEE Advanced examination to be one common entrance exam from 2015. According to the government decision, all the engineering colleges have to conduct common counselling for students who will be admitted in 2014. All the central government engineering colleges including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) will select the students through common entrance examination in 2015. Presently, JEE Main is conducted for admission to Engineering / Technology courses in NITs, CFTIs, SFTIs. JEE Advanced is conducted for admission to IITs and ISM Dhanbad. The top 1.5 lakh students of the JEE Main examination are eligible to appear in Advanced examination.