New Delhi, May 3: The extra seats the Indian Institutes of Technology will create for girls will follow the existing reservation norms for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the other backward classes, raising the possibility of a further dip in the already lower cut-off for reserved-category students.

The IIT Council, the top decision-making body for the 23 premier tech schools, had last week cleared the proposal to start the supernumerary seats in BTech courses for female students to ensure that they accounted for 20 per cent of the total student strength by 2020.

The human resource development ministry will soon issue the modalities for implementing the decision, starting from 2018.

Top council sources told The Telegraph that following specific queries from a few IIT directors, senior HRD ministry officials had explained that the reservation formula would not be diluted while creating the additional seats.

According to the decision, the additional seats would be created to the extent that girls constitute 14 per cent of the total number of students in 2018. This means if around nine per cent students admitted on merit happen to be girl students, another five per cent seats would be created.

Similarly, additional seats will be created to ensure that the percentage of girl students is 17 per cent in 2019 and 20 per cent in 2020.

According to the discussions held at the council meeting, the enhanced seats cannot violate the established reservation formula of 15 per cent for SCs, 7.5 per cent for STs and 27 per cent for OBCs.

At present, there are about 10,000 BTech seats in the 23 IITs that admit students who clear the IIT Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced test.

Once the existing seats are filled up, each IIT will start the process of admission for the supernumerary seats. To ensure that there are adequate candidates in every category, the cut-off may be fixed accordingly, which may be lower than what the cut-off otherwise would have been, two IIT directors said.

"The cut-off for SC and ST students is almost half of that for the general category now. The number of girl students in the reserved categories is also less. If reservation is implemented in the supernumerary seats, the cut-off in reserved categories may be brought down further," a director said.

Nearly 3,000 to 4,000 girl students get into the JEE-Advanced merit list. But the number is skewed in the case of SC/ST students.

Sources said HRD ministry officials were thinking of getting the decision to create seats exclusively for students of one gender vetted by lawyers. The Constitution does not provide for reservation on the basis of gender.

An IIT Council official, however, said the supernumerary seats didn't amount to reservation but a "temporary arrangement to attract more girl students".