Delhi has granted the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, permission to set aside 50 per cent of its seats for students from Bengal who crack the JEE (Main) from the 2015-16 academic session.

The remaining seats will be open to students from other parts of India who make the grade in the entrance exam.

The number of seats at the IIEST, formerly called the Bengal Engineering and Science University, for the 2015-16 session is 576.

The permission to reserve 50 per cent of these seats for deserving candidates from Bengal came after Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani cleared the proposal, IIEST director Ajoy Ray said.

Ray went to Delhi early this week for discussions with the ministry about seat reservation. "The ministry has allowed us to fill half the number of seats with students from Bengal. The Central Seat Selection Board, which handles counselling for admission to the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), would be required to draw up the final seat matrix accordingly," he said.

Higher education secretary Vivek Kumar had written to the Union HRD ministry in February, seeking to know whether 50 per cent of the seats at the IIEST would be reserved for "home" students, just as at the NITs.

The NITs admit students through the JEE (Main). The Central Seat Selection Board, comprising senior officials of the NITs, has been set up to handle the admission process.

IIEST registrar Biman Banerjee had sent a provisional seat matrix three months ago to the director of NIT Patna, who will be overseeing this year's JEE (Main). A matrix mentions the SC, ST and OBC quotas in each institute.

Banerjee's letter mentioned that the domicile quota be included in the matrix.

A member of the Central Seat Selection Board who is also a senior official of one of the NITs told Metro that state ranks based on performance in the JEE Main would be drawn up for admissions at IIEST Shibpur.

Until last year, admission based on state ranks was applicable only to NIT Durgapur. All NITs reserve 50 per cent of their seats for students of the state where they are located.

An official said the domicile quota was applicable to students who had written their plus-two exams and the JEE (Main) in Bengal. "For a domicile student, both state rank and all-India rank would count. Rankings are drawn up by giving 60 per cent weightage to the marks scored in the JEE (Main) and 40 per cent to a student's plus-two performance."

The all-India rank of a student from Bengal would determine the chances of getting a seat at any of the NITs in the rest of the country.

Delhi had twice before - in 2007 and 2010 - committed in writing to the state government that 50 per cent of the seats in national institutes within Bengal would be reserved for domicile candidates.

The then Left Front government backed the erstwhile Besu's upgrade to an IIEST only after it extracted the promise of reservation from Delhi.