Separate seat selection counselling for IITs and NITs from 2014

To make it easy for the counselling process for seat selection to IITs and NITs, Minister Human Resource Development has decided to conduct the separate counselling for Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs).

In 2013, HRD ministry had conducted the common counselling for IITs, NITs and central funded technical institutions.

In a meeting held with HRD ministers and officials from IITs, NITs and CBSE took the decision to hold the separate counselling.

"It has been decided that this year none of the processes will be disturbed. NITs will have their own counselling round, while IITs will conduct theirs. The common round might be implemented from next year after a feasibility study," said a senior official.

Ashok Thakur, secretary, department of higher education, MHRD, said "Ministry officials were keen on having a common counselling round as it would resolve the issue of seats going vacant in the premier institutes and also other state engineering colleges."

According to the sources, students who get a seat in IITs, but may not be for a popular course; and if they also get a seat in NIT for a well-known course, they may have to leave any one of the two seats. This would certainly result in a vacant seat. So, in order to avoid these kind of vacant seats left by the students, a new decision of conducting separate counselling session for the IITs and NITs were undertaken.

One of the IIT Professors said, "IITs were already working on their schedule and any new development would have disturbed their process. If any agency had to conduct the counselling, the work has to begin at least six months in advance,"