NEW DELHI : The Supreme Court has refused to interfere with the ranking and selection procedure adopted for the IIT-JEE saying there was no arbitrariness or ulterior motives in fixing the methodology, says a PTI report dated October 13.

A bench of Justices R.V. Raveendran and A.K. Patnaik said courts would interfere with the procedure only if there was proven malafide, caprice or arbitrariness, which it said was lacking in the present system adopted by the Joint Admission Board, which conducts the exams.

“The fact that the procedure was complicated would not make it arbitrary or unreasonable or discriminatory,” Justice Raveendran said.

The apex court passed the judgment while dismissing an appeal filed by aspirant Sanchit Bansal, son of an IIT Kharagpur professor, who appeared in IIT-JEE 2006 as a general category candidate.

Sanchit had secured 75 marks in mathematics, 104 in physics and 52 in chemistry, aggregating to 231.

The board had fixed the cut-off marks for admission at 37 for math, 48 for physics and 55 for chemistry and the aggregate cut-off at 154.

As Sanchit did not secure the minimum cut-off in chemistry, he failed to qualify even though his aggregate was higher than required.

He then challenged the procedure on the ground that candidates with aggregates lower than his were selected.

Rejecting his plea, the court said: “For a layman, the above procedure may appear to be highly cumbersome and complicated.

But the object of the aforesaid procedure for arriving at the cut-off marks is to select candidates well equipped in all the three subjects, with reference to their merit, weighed against the average merit of all the candidates who appeared in the examination.”

All-India common UG engg admission test,
fee hike proposed at IIT Council meet

By Rajiv Shukla
NEW DELHI : Once-beaten-twice-shy Human Resource Development Minister and ex officio Chairman of the IIT Council Mr Kapil Sibal took two cautious decisions on September 14, clarifying that the decisions would be subject to approval by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), a meeting of which is normally held in June every year.

According to the key decisions taken at the five-hour-long IIT Council meeting -- the apex body for IITs -- there would be one omnibus admission test for all undergraduate engineering institutions in the country by 2013 and, secondly, the annual fee for IITs' undergraduate programme would be raised from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh to ease financial burden on the Central kitty.

Both the decisions, however, are subject to approval by the CABE and the state education ministers.

According to the decision, based on a report by Science and Technology Secretary T. Ramasami, an all-India merit list should be prepared based on the combined weightage given to class XII exam and to the proposed all-India admission test. Since there are 44 senior secondary (10+2) boards with different assessment system, Ramasami committee suggested a formula for normalisation of marks.

The formula, said  IIT Guwahati director Gautam Baruah,  is based on percentile system under which the score obtained by the topper of each board will be considered 100 per cent and, accordingly, the score of other students would be calculated. The Ramasami committee report was formally placed before the IIT Council and its salient features discussed at the meeting.

Briefing reporters after the IIT Council meeting Sibal said : “We want to open all engineering colleges to the poorest of children and end the coaching business which only helps those who can pay.”

The government, he said, has asked the experts of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, to evolve a formula whereby Class XII marks obtained by students across all 42 boards in India could be equalised. “The ISI has used past data of board results of the last four years to show that equalisation is possible. We can then decide what weightage to give to the Class XII marks and the aptitude test,” he added.

The second decision, based on Anil Kakodkar committee report, proposes to hike the IITs' undergraduate fee four-fold -- from Rs 50,000 per annum to Rs 2 lakh per annum -- so as to reduce massive subsidy on IIT fee given by the Central government. According to the decision the student would, at the time of  IIT admission pay the existing Rs 50,000 annual fee and the balance of Rs 7.5 lakh will be realised from him when he gets a job. The decision is yet to get Finance Ministry nod.

Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students, who do not have to pay any fees now, and students from poor families, who are on scholarship or have been granted interest subsidy loans, will, however, be exempt.

Explaining the decision on fee hike Sibal said that though the tuition fee would remain at Rs 50,000 per annum, the students will have to pay Rs 7.5 lakh (Rs 1.5 lakh per year) at the end of their respective programmes. The additional amount will be a payback to meet the cost incurred by the IITs on each student. He said the DMAT system would be utilised for this.

He, however, made it clear that the “payback” scheme “won’t be applicable to those who enrol in M.Tech and Ph.D programmes or those recruited as faculty in IIT.”

“The intention is to attract IIT students to teaching and research,” Sibal said, adding they expected the number of Ph.Ds to go up from 1,000 a year now to 10,000 in 2020.

The government will track each B.Tech graduate through its proposed electronic database of certificates. The ministry has prepared a draft National Academic Depository bill that could be introduced in the winter session. “We hope the national depository will be in place by 2013. Once the certificates are put in DMAT format, we will know if any student is joining any job after completion of the course. Then we will ask the employer to pay Rs 6 lakh to the IIT for that student,” Sibal said.

IIT Council free from HRD ministry clutches

By Charu Sudan Kasturi
NEW DELH : The apex decision making body of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has broken free of the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry in a move that could be the first step towards allowing the IITs to govern themselves.

Empowered by independent staff and with a identity of its own, the IIT Council will now no longer need the HRD ministry to take its administrative decisions under the move, government sources told HT.

The final decision on the plan -- aimed at creating an IIT Council Secretariat -- may be made at a meeting between senior HRD ministry officials and the IIT directors on May 5, the sources said.

The Council alone is empowered to appoint IIT directors and take any policy decisions binding across the top engineering schools -- including their fees, reforms, administrative structure and any amendments to the aw governing the Institutes.

“The IIT Council -the highest decision making body of the IITs -at present depends on the HRD ministry to even invite members for meetings or to prepare the Council's agenda. All this will change,“ a source said.

The IITs have decided to approach D Udaya Kumar, assistant professor at IIT Guwahati and the designer of the new rupee symbol, to design a logo for the IIT Council.

The move is a component of HRD minister Kapil Sibal's larger plan to increase the functional autonomy of the IITs. The IIT Council -- consisting of all IIT directors and chairman of boards, other eminent academic administrators and scientists -- at present does not even have an office of its own. It will now have an office - a location has been identified in South Delhi's
Chittaranjan Park.

But this may only be the first step towards greater autonomy for the IITs, sources indicated. “Once the independent IIT Council is capable of handling matters, there is a possibility that we will empower it with far greater powers and withdraw from many administrative aspects of the IIT governance system,“ a source said.
(Courtesy : Hindustan Times)

No permanent foreign faculty for IITs

Charu Sudan Kasturi
NEW DELHI : In a major setback to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) plan, the Ministry for External Affairs (MEA) has rejected a proposal to liberalise visa norms to allow foreign teachers to take up permanent posts at the IITs.

The MEA has refused to change the rules under which each foreign faculty member at the IITs needs to re-obtain a work visa every five years, top government and IIT sources have confirmed to HT.

Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had on September 11, 2010 announced the plan to allow the IITs to fill up to 10% of their permanent teaching posts with foreign faculty.

The proposal -first reported by HT on September 2, 2010 -was approved by the IIT Council -the highest decision making body of the IITs -and is aimed at reducing a massive faculty crunch plaguing the IITs.

But the MEA's refusal to allow foreign faculty to join with visas of longer duration than five years means that the IITs will not be able to offer permanent posts to foreign faculty.

“We will need to continue to offer contractual appointments something we wanted to, and quite frankly, need to change,“ an IIT Director said.

Each IIT is facing a faculty crunch between 15 and 40% with a total of over 1,000 faculty posts vacant across the premier engineering schools. The Institutes have over the past year however received a number of applications from foreign faculty, including Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) keen to teach at the IITs. The IITs are arguing that permanent posts would help them lure the best of foreign teachers.

All foreign teachers are at present required to teach as visiting or ad-hoc faculty.
(Courtesy : Hindustan Times)

Sibal rejects steep fee hike for IIT students

By Sanjiv Dube
NEW DELHI : There will be no steep fee hike for the students of the Indian Institutes of Technology, according to a decision taken by the IIT Council on January 21.

Chairing the IIT Council meet here, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal rejected the Anil Kakodkar committee proposal for five-fold increase in fee for undergraduate programme of the IITs.

The Kakodkar committee, set up by the government in October 2009 to study the roadmap for the autonomy and future of the IITs, had recommended that the fee be raised from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 to Rs 2.5 lakh per annum.

As the committee report came for discussion at the 42nd meeting of the IIT Council Sibal rejected the fee hike proposal saying “such a hike would prove a deterrent to a large number of IIT aspirants,” a ministry official said. The Council asked the committee to rework the fee structure taking into account the aspirations of all sections. During the meeting, Sibal announced setting up 50 research parks at a cost of Rs 200 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan period.

Under the programme, industry will undertake research on various subjects with the support of experts from the IITs.

The research parks have been proposed to be set up on public-private-partnership (PPP) model. One such research park has already come up in Chennai.

The meeting took note of the fact that credit-based practices were being followed by the IITs to promote students from one semester to the next, and agreed that academic bodies of the IITs should consider acquisition of credits as a criteria for students and granting of degrees to bring uniformity.

The issue came up following submission of Dhande committee report on uniform and homogeneous criteria for promoting students in the IITs.

Kanpur IIT director Dhande, who headed two committees, presented reports on a “uniform criteria for promoting students from one semester to the next in the IITs and on the “requirement of infrastructure for research”. Both reports have been accepted. Each IIT at present has its own criteria for promotion.

The Council decided that a panel for visitor’s nominee for a particular department would be created which all IITs could use for faculty selection. “This will ensure timely selection of professors,” the Council noted.

It also decided that the appointment of directors should be through advertisements so that a wider base was created.

“It was decided that in principle approval may be granted for setting up an institute in Mauritius with the help of the IITs,” an official said.

At the meeting, a presentation was made on adopting cyber security as part of the curriculum for the IITs. So it was decided that a committee be set up to develop a roadmap for the future and give a report in next three months.

“The committee would involve all educational institutions as well as government departments,” the HRD Ministry official said.