New Delhi, June 24: The Centre is firm on retaining the new admission policy for the National Institutes of Technology it announced this month, making merit the sole criterion for selection to non-domicile or “central-pool” seats.
Many states and Union territories have opposed the new policy saying it favours educationally advanced states. Earlier, the non-domicile seats — those apart from the 50 per cent set aside for the home state — were divided into quotas for all the other states and Union territories.
However, the Centre, keen to be seen as sensitive to students potentially affected by the new admission guidelines, has called these state governments and Union territories to a meeting to “address the apprehensions” they have raised.
But the June 26 meeting with the technical education secretaries from these states and Union territories is meant mainly to “hear them out”.
“We have decided to stick to the new policy, and the June 26 meeting is unlikely to change our mind,” a technical education official at the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry said.
Till 2007, each of India’s 20 NITs — upgraded from the status of Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) in 2002 — were allowed to reserve 50 per cent seats for students from the state in which they function.
The remaining 50 per cent seats formed part of a central “pool” which, till now, has been filled on the basis of proportional representation: a state where the NIT offers more seats gets greater representation in other NITs.
A small number of seats were kept aside for students from the few states that do not have NITs.
Selection was done on the basis of students’ ranks (in relation to other candidates from their own states) in the centrally conducted All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE).
But on June 9, the HRD ministry issued a notification to all NITs informing them it was ending the proportional representation system.
The institutes, the notification says, are “directed to admit candidates in NITs under non-domicile category seats on merit basis from amongst all India rank holders of AIEEE.”
The 20 NITs together offer around 9,000 seats in undergraduate engineering and architecture courses.
Eight states from the Northeast, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Goa, Chandigarh and Pondicherry have written to HRD minister Arjun Singh expressing the fear that the new admission policy would discriminate against them.
Some of the state governments have said they feared their students would obtain fewer seats than before.
The Union territories and Goa complained that because they do not have NITs, their students, who “relied” on the small fraction of seats reserved for them, may lose out.
But HRD ministry officials argue that the Centre alone is authorised to decide the NIT admission policy.
“After the RECs were converted to NITs, the state governments no longer pay a paisa for their functioning,” an official said. “However, if the state governments alleging discrimination are representing fears conveyed to them by students, we would like to assuage those concerns.”
