The Centre has denied the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST) the IIT route to admit students, clubbing the Shibpur campus with the ones that are mandated to conduct admission through JEE Main.
The 15 IITs, along with a few other top-notch institutes, fill up their seats through JEE Advanced, which students can only write after cracking JEE Main.
“We will admit students through JEE Main next year,” said IIEST director Ajoy Kumar Ray. “We wanted to take in students through JEE Advanced but have to settle for JEE Main as the human resource development ministry has recently included our institute in the NIT council.”
The NITs — National Institutes of Technology — admit students through JEE Main.
It became evident early last week that the JEE Advanced door had been shut on the IIEST, following a notification issued by IIT Bombay, which will conduct the test next year.
The notification carried a list of institutes that would admit students through JEE Advanced. The IIEST, which has been upgraded from the Bengal Engineering and Science University, was not on the list.
Pre-upgrade, the institute used to admit students through the state JEE.
The IIEST executive council had in June decided to opt for JEE Advanced to ensure that only the best get a berth on the Shibpur campus. The committee’s resolution was forwarded to the human resource development ministry for approval.
But the ministry recently turned down the proposal, saying the IIEST has been included in the NIT council and has to admit students through JEE Main, conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education.
The institutes, other than the IITs, that admit students through JEE Advanced are the Indian School of Mines (Dhanbad), Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology (Rae Bareli), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (Thiruvananthapuram) and the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore).
At the IIEST, candidates will be selected according to their ranks based on the JEE Main scores and Class XII board exam marks.
The JEE Advanced will be held on May 24, 2015; the JEE Main date is yet to be notified.
Reservation
IIEST director Ray is likely to meet human resource development ministry officials on November 5 to discuss the issue of setting aside half the seats for “home (Bengal) students” from the 2015-16 academic session.
An IIEST official said the ministry had in a letter to the then Left Front government in 2007 promised to reserve 50 per cent seats for students from Bengal. In the IIEST act, however, there is no mention of such reservation.
In May, then education minister Bratya Basu had requested the Centre to reserve half the seats at the IIEST for students from the state from the next academic year.
The higher education department, Basu had said, had also written to Ray, requesting him to insert the provision for reservation for “home students’’ in the institute’s statutes. Ray had passed on the proposal to the Centre in June.
“I will take it up with the ministry again so that 50 per cent seats can be set aside for Bengal students coming through JEE Main from the next academic year,” said Ray.
