Admission to National Institutes of Technology on All India merit basis

New Delhi, June 23 : To streamline the system of admission in 20 National Institutes of Technology (NIT), the Ministry of Human Resource Development has issued instructions to the Central Counseling Board (CCB) 2008 to fill the outside State quota seats in these institutes on All India merit basis.

With the changed scenario, there may be a few States/Union Territories (UT), which may have apprehensions of not getting representation in various technical institutions at the same level as they were getting in earlier years.

The exact position depends on exercise of choices by the candidates and hence, would be clear only by end of 1st round of counselling on the July 13, 2008.

To address apprehensions of such States/UTs, Ministry of Human Resource Development has convened a meeting of Technical Education Secretaries of these States and UTs on June 26, 2008. All efforts will be made to give satisfaction to all States of the country, the ministry said.

Admissions in NITs are made on the basis of All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education.

Till 2007, the seats in an NIT used to be filled by allocating 50 per cent of the seats to the eligible candidates of the States where an NIT is located and rest 50 per cent of the seats (Outside State quota) were allocated to other States/UTs. These outside State quota seats allocated to different States/UTs used to be filled by the eligible candidates from these States/UTs based on their State/UT specific AIEEE ranks.

With this system of filling outside State quota seats, there were situations when candidates with higher marks from some States/UTs were not getting admissions in NITs whereas some other candidates from other State/UTs with lower marks were getting admissions. This system had other demerits like, possible situations where candidates from a particular category with very low marks from certain States getting admission while candidates from the same category with much higher marks but from some other State being denied admission. The system was also prone to be misused by the scheming elements.

ANI