Indian Institutes of Technology would increase the students’ intake with 5% from the next academic session, i.e., 2017. The decision was taken in a meeting conducted by the Joint Admission Board (JAB), the highest decision-making body of IIT-JEE (Advanced) . The meeting was attended by all the chairpersons of IITs. Currently, the total student intake of IITs is 10,572 which would be increased to 11,100 from next year. Hence, IITs will have 528 more seats beginning next academic session.
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23 IITs accepted the decision taken by JAB. However, several older IITs clarified that they would not implement the 5% increase in intake as their current infrastructure needs to be improved to accommodate more students. It has also been decided that 10% more international students will be admitted from the next academic session.
One of the senior officials of IIT-Kharagpur stated that they are not ready to increase the students’ intake as they need to build classrooms, accommodation, and other infrastructure. The government will need to fund the construction of these facilities. Also, it would require more time to build world-class laboratories which offer state-of-the-art facilities.
Seven older IITs which include IIT Bombay , Guwahati, Kanpur , Delhi , Kharagpur, Roorkee and Madras did not accept to increase the students’ intake for B.Tech courses. They clarified that it would be difficult to increase the intake with the limited resources which are being provided by the government. On the other hand, the institutes agreed to increase the intake for its M.Tech and Ph.D. programmes. They clarified that lack of a proper student-teacher ratio is also one of the reasons for not implementing 5% increase in students’ intake.