Seven old Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have expressed their inability to add more seats to their four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) programmes.
According to a report in The Indian Express, the institutions have cited lack of resources from infrastructure to faculty in meeting the demand proposed by the IIT Council.
The seven IITs who have refused to agree with IIT Council’s suggestion are - Bombay, Delhi, Guwahati, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Madras and Roorkee.
The older IITs, together, account for close to 6,500 seats.
The report, however, mentioned that the second-generation IITs in Hyderabad, Mandi, Ropar, Patna and Jammu have said that they will increase their undergraduate student strength from next year.
While IIT Hyderabad has said that it will add another 40 seats, IIT Mandi will add 50; IIT Patna 25; IIT Ropar 105 seats and IIT Jammu 30 seats.
The IIT Council, the highest decision making body, had in August said that it will consider a proposal according to which 30,000 additional non-resident students will be allowed to study in these institutes in the next three years.
The plan, it had said, was to increase the number by 10,000 per year so that the number of IITians touches 1 lakh by 2020.
Currently, there are 23 IITs in the country. They are: Bhilai, Madras, Delhi, Dhanbad, Dharwad, Goa, Guwahati, Jammu, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Bombay, Roorkee, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Indore, Jodhpur, Mandi, Palghat, Patna, Ropar, Tirupati and Varanasi.
IITs are most premier engineering institutes in the country. They are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 which has declared them as institutions of national importance.
