Cuttack, Oct. 1: The Centre’s policy to reserve 50 per cent seats in each national institute of technology for home state students and the remaining for those from other states will stay for now.

Orissa High Court today set aside the order of a single bench that quashed the Centre’s new seat allotment policy for home state quota at the national institutes of technology. The court said the new policy “is valid as it is in the interest of national integration”.

Earlier, 50 per cent seats in these premier engineering institutes were reserved for home state students and the remaining were filled up on the basis of all-India rankings. The students who made it through the all India rankings were not included in the seats meant for the state.

The new norm for seat allotment was for the 30 national institutes of technology for AIEEE rank holders in the admission procedure for 2012.

The chairman of the Central Counselling Board, which monitors the selection process, had filed a writ appeal. The single bench of Justice Sanju Panda had quashed the new guideline on August 1. Later, the court issued an interim stay on the quashing order on August 8.

The board took the stand that the new guideline was aimed to give a national look to the NITs. Allowing the writ appeal today, the division bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice S.K. Mishra set aside the August 1 judgment and ruled that the admission of students following the new seat allotment system – 50 per cent for home state students and 50 per cent for those from other states — was acceptable.

The new policy said: “The other state quota seats in an institute shall be available only to candidates from other states, home state candidates being forbidden from these seats.”

The single bench had quashed it after two separate petitions filed by three students and a parent challenged it on the ground that it brought the home quota under stress, narrowing down the options of students as it effectively meant that almost all those qualifying from a particular state would be competing for the NIT in their state in the home quota.

The Central Counselling Board coordinates admissions to undergraduate degree programmes in engineering, technology and architecture in select institutions.