Tripura urges Centre to withdraw new admission policy in NITs

Agartala, Jun 26 (UNI) The Tripura Assembly has passed an unanimous resolution to resolve the issue of admission at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala and Silchar, Assam, for the students of Northeastern states ahead of the crucial meeting with the Union Human Resource Development Ministry in this regard.

State Parliamentary Minister Tapan Chakraborty said here today that the House had expressed concern over the HRD Ministry's decision to do away with quota for Tripura and Assam students outside the state in various engineering colleges and NITs and sent a proposal to the Ministry to revoke the recent notification.

The seats in the NITs used to be filled by allocating 50 per cent of the seats to the eligible candidates of the state where an NIT is located and rest 50 per cent of the seats (Outside State quota) were allocated to other States/Union Territories, which had been filled by the eligible candidates on their State/UT specific All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) ranks till 2007, Mr Chakraborty said.

However, the Union Ministry issued a notification on June 9 in which it totally changed the seat allotment pattern in the NITs, and instead said seats in the NITs were to be filled up by the candidates qualifying the AIEEE conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education.

With this system of filling outside state quota seats, there arose 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, Mr Chakraborty said.

He added that the system had other demerits, including possible situations where candidates from a particular category with very low marks from certain states were getting admission while candidates from the same category with much higher marks but from some other states were being denied admission.

''The matter will be discussed threadbare at a high-level meeting in Delhi today and the commissioner of the higher education department will attend the meeting and communicate our stand,'' Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar told mediapersons while pointing out that the state government had opposed the decision of national reservation formula in NIT, Agartala.

''There is a clear ruling by the Supreme Court that the reservation formula followed at the national level cannot be enforced in institutions located within areas under the Sixth Schedule and our NIT is under the area of this schedule. Despite our repeated appeals, the HRD Ministry has not yet informed us of its decision,'' Mr Sarkar said.

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