Director of IIT-Patna Anil Kumar Bhowmick addresses freshers at the orientation programme on the institute campus on Monday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

For a change, there is an inflow of students into Bihar, thanks to the vaunted Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Patna.

This year, the number of students who have taken admission in the institute is more compared to previous years. Of the 120 seats up for grabs, 119 have been taken. Last year, the number was 117. When the institute started in 2008, only 92 students had taken admission.

On Monday, the institute organised an orientation session for the fresh batch of students. Director of IIT-Patna Anil Kumar Bhowmick said: “Good placement record, experienced faculty and the upcoming campus at Bihta are reasons behind IIT-Patna becoming the most-desired institute among the new IITs for students.”

Bhowmick took pride in saying that more and more students from outside Bihar are opting for the Patna institute.

Most students in the fresh batch feel that of the new IITs, the Patna cradle is ahead in terms of placement and other parameters on which a technical institute should be judged.

Hyderabad resident Praneeth Cheekoti, who secured 4,529 rank in IIT-JEE, said: “I have come to know from my seniors that among the new IITs, Patna stands out in terms of various parameters.”

Cheekoti, who has opted for electrical engineering, added that information technology (IT) giant, Microsoft, has offered jobs to three students at an annual package of Rs 16.5 lakh. “This is comparatively good for a new institute,” Cheekoti said.

Echoing Cheekoti, Ranchi girl Manvee, who secured 3,771 rank in IIT-JEE, said: “According to my IIT-JEE rank, I was getting metallurgy, bio-technology, chemical engineering in the older IITs such as Kharagpur (Bengal) and Kanpur (UP). However, I got computer science in IIT-Patna. Without giving a second thought I opted for IIT-Patna. Moreover, Patna is close to Ranchi.”

The newcomers are so buoyant about IIT-Patna that even reports on deteriorating law and order in the state have failed to make a dent in the cradle’s reputation here.

V.J.G. Bharadwaj, another student from Hyderabad who secured 4,771 rank in IIT-JEE, said: “Every big city has such problems with stray incidents of crime. An institute can’t be judged on this basis.”

From Wednesday, IIT-Patna will introduce nanotechnology as a new course. IIT-Patna will be the first among the IITs to start an MTech programme in nanotechnology. Along with nanotechnology, the institute will also start MTech programmes in mechatronics and mathematics & computing. The students’ intake for all the three programmes is 10 each.

Bhowmick said: “For the 10 seats in all the three MTech programmes, the institute received 2,100 applications. The students were selected on the basis of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) score and interviews conducted by IIT-Patna.”

NIT-Patna also organised its orientation session on Monday. After the third round of counselling, 373 students have taken admission in the NIT. The total number of seats in the five engineering branches of the institute is 554. Classes in NIT-Patna will start from Tuesday.

At BIT-Patna, 270 students have so far enrolled this year against the capacity of 300 in the seven streams.