One of BIT-Sindri’s hostels on Sunday. (Gautam Dey)

Students looking to take admission to BIT-Sindri’s second year under the lateral entry scheme might have to fend for their own accommodation from this academic session.

Officials of the Sindri cradle, which admits as many as 73 engineering diploma holders to its second year every academic session, said that the new move was being mulled because of a severe space crunch in existing hostels.

Though, the plan initially was to not accommodate the 1st year B Tech students in the hostels, sources said that the plan was later dropped keeping in mind the difficulties the freshers, might face in finding a place to stay.

The institute, which admits 10 per cent of its sanctioned strength of students under the lateral entry scheme each year, offers 725 seats in 10 disciplines.

While the mechanical engineering stream admits 105 students, the electrical, production and metallurgical and information technology streams admit 99, 54, 54 and 40 students each respectively. The chemical engineering branch admits 91 and the electronics and communication-engineering branch has 52 seats. The civil, mining and computer science streams take 98, 49 and 38 students each. Apart from this, 35 seats are reserved for meritorious students from financially weaker backgrounds (families earning Rs 2 lakh per annum or less) and 10 seats are reserved under the defence services quota.

“We are facing a lot of difficulty in accommodating close to 3,000 students in our 25 hostels. The sanctioned student strength at these hostels is around 2,100,” said BIT-Sindri director S.K. Singh.

He added that besides the BTech students, the institute also had to accommodate MTech students in five branches — mechanical, electrical, metallurgical, chemical and civil engineering branches.

“In fact, we have even converted many vacant teacher quarters into PG hostels for students,” Singh admitted.

The first batch of students, who have cleared the Jharkhand Combined Entrance Competitive Examinations, will be counselled for admission in Ranchi from July 14-20. The admission for the Sindri cradles BTech course may commence on July 23 and end four days later.

“We will allocate the 1st year students with hostels during the time of admission itself. An anti-ragging committee — comprising hostel superintendents and senior teachers will also be constituted to keep tab on juniors as per directions of the Supreme Court,” Singh said.

The director added that some senior students might also be included in the committee who would feed information and help the teachers.

“We plan to introduce some very strict rules to prevent ragging from this year onwards. The rules are being drafted and will be finalised only after a meeting scheduled on july 2,” Singh said.