New Delhi, Sept. 14: The human resource development ministry has been prodding the IITs to increase student intake at all levels but the older ones among the premier tech schools are unlikely to increase seats in BTech and MTech courses.

In a meeting of IIT directors at IIT Bhubaneswar on Sunday, the older IITs cited lack of infrastructure and other reasons while expressing their inability to increase seats in these courses.

"All the IITs are in favour of increasing seats. But the scope for increase is there in the new IITs. The older IITs may increase some seats at the PhD level," the director of one of the older IITs told The Telegraph.

The IITs in Kharagpur, Delhi, Bombay and Madras are some of the older ones among the 23 existing IITs.

Sources, however, said the directors felt that the target of increasing the total number of admissions every year from 21,500 now to 31,000 in all courses was still possible over the next few years, as the new IITs could enhance their student intake.

On August 23, the IIT Council had given in-principle approval to a proposal to enhance the student intake in all programmes by almost 50 per cent over the next three years. The council, the apex body to decide on IIT matters and headed by HRD minister Prakash Javadekar, had asked the 23 IITs to assess their capacity and come up with a roadmap on how many seats each of them could increase. The ministry wants the 23 IITs to gradually enhance the intake in BTech, MTech and PhD courses from 10,500, 8,000 and 3,000 now to 14,500, 12,000 and 4,500, respectively, over the next three years.

The registrar of another older IIT said the tech schools had to increase their intake by 54 per cent at all levels to ensure that general category students were not affected after the 27 per cent quota for other backward classes was implemented through a law in 2008. Commensurate facilities like hostels and additional faculty requirements were yet to be fulfilled, the official added.

Sources said the older IITs needed to consolidate the expansion that has already taken place in the last six years.

A senior teacher in a new IIT said each of the 14 younger tech schools admitted fewer than 200 BTech students, while the BTech student intake in each of the older IITs was over 700. IIT Kharagpur admits around 1,200 BTech students.

Sources privy to Sunday's discussions said the directors felt that most of the new IITs, which have recently moved to permanent campuses, could go for the expected expansions once they started operating at their full potential.

The IITs might, however, take longer than the three years that the ministry expects them to take to achieve the expected expansions.

An IIT source said MTech seats often remained vacant as around 20 per cent students dropped out after getting jobs in public sector undertakings based on their GATE score, the selection test for master's courses.

The IITs will now write to the PSUs to defer the joining date of the candidates till they had completed their MTech course.

In PhD programmes, however, the older IITs would soon open admissions to external students who are not required to stay on the campus. More seats would be added in these courses to offer admissions to those who are already employed but want to pursue research simultaneously.

The directors felt that poor faculty strength was another hurdle in the way of expansions. Against the norm of one teacher for every 10 students, the current ratio in the IITs is one for every 15.

Sources said the IITs would send teams to US tech schools later this year to recruit foreign faculty and also write to the HRD ministry requesting it to take up with the ministries of home and external affairs to ease visa norms and other requirements for foreigners.