Indian Institutes of Technology: The highest number of foreign students enrolled in the Indian Institute of Technology in 2022. According to the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced report a total of 66 foreign students got admission to the IITs. In the past five years, this has been the highest.
In the last 5 years, the number of admissions at IITs in the foreign nationals category had not crossed 10. Industry experts have attributed the sharp increase in enrollment to the recent change in the definition of foreign nationals applying for professional courses in India.
The Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) are now included in the foreign nationals category for admission to government institutions following the gazette issued by the government in March 2021. This government order made the OCI and PIO candidates eligible for JEE (Advanced) and Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JOSAA) for seat allocation in IITs like foreign nationals.
As per the regulation, the OCI and PIO students will be allotted supernumerary seats in IITs with higher fees. Supernumerary seats are the surplus seats approved by the government over and above the sanctioned intake.
Earlier, the OCI and PIO students were treated as Indian citizens for taking admission to Indian government institutes. Before the new rule, foreign nationals were given up to 10% of the supernumerary seats in each programme. In 2022, the government created 66 more seats at IITs for overseas candidates.
One of the professors of IIT Bombay commented on the rise in enrollment that these foreign nationals could be regular Indian students having passports from other countries due to various reasons. They had to compete earlier from the fixed number of seats, meant for Indian citizens.
In 2021, 8 seats were offered to foreign nationals in the IITs, and there were 62 OCI and 5 PIO students in the IITs.
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