The NIFT-Bhubaneswar building

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 1: Authorities of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) here will organise “open house” meets to attract more local candidates.

Authorities of the institute are worried over domicile seats falling vacant every year.

The institute, which started functioning here from June 2010, offers four undergraduate programmes with 30 seats each. With 20 per cent reservation for the native Odia students in each programme, there are six seats in each of the four courses. However, the response from the local students is far from encouraging, said an official.

In the first year, only two of the 24 reserved seats were filled up. The poor run continued in the subsequent batches as well. “In the last three years, only 11 students from the state have taken admissions in our institute. According to the rules, the vacant seats cannot be transferred to the general quota. But, we have managed to fill up 17 of 24 domicile seats in the current academic session,” said joint director of the institute Binaya Bhusan Jena.

The authorities have, therefore, sought the help of school and mass education officials to organise the open house meetings in various districts of the state with the aim to motivate Class XII students, who are domiciled in Odisha, to pursue the fashion technology courses. “They have already sent out letters to collectors of several districts about the proposal. We plan to hold the meets in the second or third week of October. Berhampur, Sambalpur and Rourkela are among our major venues,” said Jena.

Faculty members of the institute will team up with local residents of various districts to convene the open house meets.

“We will try to cover at least two places a day and raise awareness among youngsters about the opportunities in NIFT-Bhubaneswar. That will hopefully help increase the representation of Odia students in our institute. It is imperative since we are planning to launch two new courses by next year,” a faculty member said.

An official said the domicile seat arrangement was exclusive to NIFT-Bhubaneswar as it had been established following the state government’s proposal to the ministry of textiles. The government spent Rs 58.65 crore to set up the institute.