The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will offer about 500 seats to candidates from economically weaker sections this year, IIT officials familiar with the matter said.
In January, the Centre had announced 10% reservations in jobs and educational institutions to economically weaker sections (EWS) from the general category in a move that, it said, was done to provide social equality. The EWS quotas were done without disturbing the existing quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, it clarified.
In case of admission to central institutions, the 10% reservation for EWS entails an overall increase of around 25% seats to ensure the number of general category seats remains unchanged. Implementing the EWS quota can be staggered over two years.
According to the tech school officials, most of the 23 IITs will, on average, implement around 4% EWS quota this year. The Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), for admission to IITs, is scheduled to be held on May 27 and will be conducted by IIT Roorkee.
In 2018, out of the 2,31,024 candidates shortlisted after the JEE (Main), only 1,65,656 students registered for the JEE (Advanced). A total of 11,279 seats were offered by the IITs in 2018, an increase of 291 seats from 2017.
Read more of this in a report by Vanita Srivastava published in Hindustan Times...
