New Delhi: The Indian Institutes of Technology have requested BITS Pilani to join their counselling process for BTech admissions this year.

Sources said the idea was to prevent students admitted to the IITs or the National Institutes of Technology - participants to a common counselling process - from quitting if they later obtained a preferred branch at Pilani.

"This problem can be addressed if BITS Pilani too joins the common counselling. But no response has been received from them yet," an official with the IITs' Joint Admission Board told The Telegraph.

Counselling is the process through which it is decided, on the basis of a student's merit-list rank and preferences, which institution and which branch of engineering he should be picked for. During common counselling, a student receives an offer from just one institute at any point.

Because BITS Pilani held its own, separate counselling, a student would often "block" a seat in an IIT or an NIT till he found out what Pilani could offer him. If he liked the branch on offer at Pilani, he quit his IIT or NIT seat, leaving a vacancy.

Unlike the NITs and the IITs, where merit lists are drawn up on the basis of the Joint Entrance Examination Main and Joint Entrance Examination Advanced, respectively, admission to Pilani hinges on candidates' BITS SAT scores.

"They (Pilani) can participate in the common counselling on the basis of the BITS SAT scores if they want," the Joint Admission Board official said.

An NIT director said that a handful of private engineering colleges had already participated in the common counselling over the past two years, and that the demand had increased this year.

"It's a market strategy for many private institutions. They can claim in their advertisements that they admit students through the IIT-NIT counselling. But, after one or two rounds of common counselling, most of them withdraw and start their own counselling," the director said.

Many private colleges would balk at admitting only the successful JEE candidates, preferring instead to set aside a substantial number of seats for others who would pay to secure a seat.

The human resource development ministry has said in a notification that it would issue guidelines on the inclusion of private institutions in the common counselling process.