7 IITs, IT BHU, ISM to increase seats by 13 per cent in coming academic session

New Delhi, Apr 16 : The seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), IT BHU and ISM, Dhanbad, would increase their seats by 13 per cent in the coming academic session to implement the 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs), the institutes declared after a meeting of their directors here today.

"The elite institutions will exclude cream layer from the quota ambit as specified by the apex court," said IIT Delhi Director Surendra Prasad.

"Pertaining to the creamy layer, we will go by the instructions of the government. The family income will be the criteria," he added.

Three new IITs will also start operating from the coming session in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan.

"However, those IITs will implement the quota in one go. They will have 120 seats each and will implement the reservation for the OBCs, SCs and STs," Prasad added.

The IIT Joint Entrance Board will bring out two merit lists one for the general category and one for the OBCs, he said.

Presently, there are about 4,000 seats in IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Guwahati and Roorkee. The increase in number of seats could go up to 5,000 this year to implement the OBC quota.

These seats would be increased to about 4,500 in 2008-09 apart from the 360 seats to be offered by the three new IITs.

The quota system will be applicable for undergraduate as well as postgraduate students, Prasad said.

The seats will be increased by 31 per cent in 2009-10 and 54 per cent in 2010-11.

The cut-off for OBC students will be 90 per cent of what is fixed for general category students in JEE 2008.

OBC students, who better perform in the test, will also figure in the merit list for the general category.

"The names of OBC students, who perform better, will find place in both the merit lists. They will have option to choose whether they would take advantage of reservation," Prasad said.

The Government has already announced a grant of Rs 770 crore for augmenting the infrastructure of IITs.

"We will develop additional infrastructure and create more labs. In the next three years, there will be rapid expansion of infrastructure facilities," he said.

On April 10, the Supreme Court had upheld the Government's decision of 27 per cent quota for OBCs in higher educational institutions, while pronouncing its verdict on the constitutional validity of the controversial law.

The apex court had decided that the Central Government was legally right to provide OBC quotas in higher educational institutions like the IITs, Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS).

The apex court, however, had asked the Government to exclude the creamy layer from the reservation quota.

The court had also asked the Government to include children of MPs and MLAs in the creamy layer, thereby excluding them from the quota.

The new policy, if implemented, would take the overall reservation in the Government-funded higher education institutions from the current 22.5 (for SC and ST students) to 49.5 per cent.

ANI