KHARAGPUR : The Indian Institutes of Technology have shelved the two key decision they proposed to take at the Kharagpur joint admission board meeting. With the shelving of the decisions the minimum ten-plus-two eligibility cutoff will remain at 60 per cent, for now, and Kota will continue to be a Joint Entrance Exam centre.

The institutes have also decided to relax the admission criteria for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students next year to minimise waste of seats.

The joint admission board of the IITs — the highest policy-making body for the JEE — met in Kharagpur on August 24 and decided to modify the admission criteria, IIT sources said.

“In 2009, subject cutoffs will be fixed using a different formula from the one used in 2007 and 2008. This formula will be finalised and made available on the JEE website soon,” an IIT director said.

The JEE-2006 cutoffs, when calculated using the formula the IITs claimed to have used, were different from the actual cutoffs the IITs said they had used. As many as 994 general category students who had cleared the cutoffs obtained using the IITs’ stated formula were denied seats.

In 2007 and 2008, the IITs followed a different formula from the one they claimed to have used in 2006.

The top 80 per cent students in each subject — physics, chemistry and mathematics — were short-listed in 2007 and 2008. A revised list of students common to all three subject lists — the top 80 per cent for all three subjects — was then created, and the aggregate of these students calculated. Based on the number of seats available, students with the top aggregates were selected to the IITs.

“The major change likely… in 2009 is that the cutoffs are going to rise,” a senior IIT official said.

The IIT have decided to lower entry levels for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) students even further to cope with the issue of reserved seats falling vacant.

The IITs who met in Kharagpur unanimously agreed to allow a 50 per cent relaxation of scores for SC/ST students, up from the current 40 per cent, for the coming Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) in April 2009.

In 2009, the SC/ST cutoff in each subject and for the aggregate will be kept at 50 per cent the cutoff for general category students, officials said.

They accepted that the increase in subject cutoffs for general category students will cause a corresponding hike for SC/ST candidates, but claimed it would not offset the effects of the relaxation.

“Although the subject cutoffs may rise under the new formula, the aggregate cutoff is not likely to change much. Relaxing the aggregate cutoff for SC/ST students is critical, as that is the stage at which they fail,” an official said.

The IITs have this year increased SC/ST seats by a little over 4 per cent to ensure their share remains 22.5 per cent of the total following the implementation of 9 per cent OBC quotas. But in 2009, the IITs plan to increase the OBC quota to 18 per cent — they have to implement 27 per cent reservations in three years — and need to alter the number of seats for SC/ST students accordingly.

With regard to the JEE-2008 scores, for example, if the last general category student was admitted with an overall score of 172 out of 489, the aggregate cut-off for an SC/ST student was 104 (after a 40% relaxation). If the general category cut-off in 2009 is the same, the bar for SC/ST candidates would be lowered to 86 (50% of 172). Similarly, subject-wise cut-offs would also be relaxed.

This means that with the last general category student scoring 5 in maths, 0 in physics and 3 in chemistry in JEE 2008, an SC/ST student who had scored up to 40% lower - 3 in maths, 0 in physics and 1.8 in chemistry - was given a seat in the IITs.

IIT-Guwahati director Gautam Barua said, "The change has been brought about keeping in mind that the intake for SC/ST students will go up over the years."

Officials said the joint admission board, a body that implements the JEE, would take a decision on whether to bar Kota from hosting the entrance test next year.

The sources hinted that there were minor differences of opinion among the IIT directors on Kota’s future as a JEE centre. The committee is likely to meet later this year.

A proposal to raise the eligibility cutoff from 60 per cent to 70 per cent in the Class XII board exams has found favour with the Human Resource Development Ministry, sources said.

The proposal, made by IIT Madras director M.S. Ananth to his colleagues, is now under the ministry’s consideration since it involves consultations with school boards.

Lastly, the directors have decided to write to the ministry to permit them to hold JEE-2009 in Singapore too. Currently, the exam is being conducted in 117 cities. For the first time this year, JEE-2008 was conducted in Dubai.

IIT-B director Ashok Misra quits to join a US firm   

NEW YORK : The director of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Prof Ashok Misra resigned here on July 20 and his resignation has been accepted by the board chief, according an agency report.

He announced his resignation at the culmination of the IIT-B’s Golden Jubilee Conference here on July 20.

Misra, who has served IIT-B as director since 2000, is joining Intellectual Ventures, a private company based at Bellevue in the US state of Washington. Founded in 2000, the company invests in inventions and aims to develop a patents portfolio.

Misra was serving his second term as IIT director and had two more years to go. Even after this, he could have continued as professor till he reached the age of 65.

Faculty members at Powai had no inkling that Misra was planning to quit. Dr Misra could not be contacted as he was flying back to the city from New York but the Director of IIT-Madras M S Ananth did say that Misra was "toying with the idea of joining the private sector for some time now".

A few months ago, Misra was also given the charge of mentoring the new IIT in Gujarat and Indore. However, he had written to the Human Resource Development Ministry that the Indore project could only be taken up next year. That now, will have to be handled by the new man who takes charge.

During his tenure, Misra also set up an extension centre of IIT-Bombay in Gandhinagar. However, before rising to the director's rank, Misra spent a decade with IIT-Delhi, as the head of the Centre for Polymer Science and Engineering, and later from 1997 to 2000 as Dean, Alumni Affairs and international programmes.

An alumnus of IIT-Kanpur, Misra completed his B.Tech in chemical engineering in 1968, went on to obtain a PhD in 1974 in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He also completed an executive development programme in 1999 at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Illinois. Besides publishing 70 papers in international journals, he has been awarded six patents.

Misra’s research and development contributions have earned him several awards and honours. These include the fellowship of the National Academy of Sciences and fellowship of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. Besides publishing 70 papers in international journals, he has been awarded six patents.

During his tenure as director, IIT-B has been transformed into a leading R&D institute while maintaining its reputation as a leader in quality engineering education in India.

IIT-B’s event in New York was attended by over 1,000 people and addressed by Indian Ambassador to US Ronen Sen and many luminaries from science and technology as well as business.     

Cabinet clears 8 new IITs, ordinance soon

NEW DELHI : On July 17 the Union Cabinet formally approved the setting up of eight new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the 11th Plan. Six of these IITs — one each in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Orissa — are due to start their academic session on July 23.

Though the proposal to set up the eight IITs had been cleared by the National Development Council, a formal Cabinet approval was needed to form societies to operationalise the institutes, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said after a meeting of the Cabinet. He said without the creation of such societies, government policies, including reservation, could not be applied to these institutions. The creation of separate societies for each of the new IITs will be followed by a draft legislation to bring the societies under the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961.

Each of the new IITs will get Rs.760 crore over six years; taking the total bill to Rs.6,080 crore, Chidambaram said. Since the new IITs do not have their own campuses and are yet to recruit faculty, each is being mentored by one of the existing institutions.

Of the six new IITs, three — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat — will begin their B.Tech programmes on temporary campuses located near the place where their campuses are being planned. They will be mentored by the IIT-Madras, IIT-Guwahati and IIT-Bombay respectively. The upcoming IITs in Rajasthan, Punjab and Orissa will conduct their classes on the campuses of their mentor IITs — Kanpur, Delhi and Kharagpur respectively.

The UPA government is planning to bring in an ordinance each to enable the setting up of the new IITs as also 16 Central universities. The proposal for the two ordinances has emanated from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, said sources. The proposed ordinances will first need the approval of the Cabinet, sources said.

While in the normal course, it is through an act of Parliament that the new IITs and Central universities are set up but the need for an ordinance was felt because of the prevailing political uncertainty. The ordinance will enable an amendment to the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961.

The Cabinet on July 17 gave its formal nod to the “forming of societies for creating legal entities for the new IITs”. These societies will be registered and then brought under the Act, said sources.

With the creation of the new IITs, high quality technical education will become accessible to bright students, as only two per cent of about three lakh students appearing at the Joint Entrance Examination manage to get admissions in the existing ones, the source said.

The Cabinet also approved creation of 30 faculty posts per year during the first three years of the establishment of each of the new IITs, besides approving the posts of a director and a registrar. The IITs of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat would commence their classes with about 120 students each for B.Tech programmes on the temporary campuses and would be mentored by the IITs of Madras, Guwahati and Bombay respectively.

The three IITs of Rajasthan, Punjab and Orissa will start their classes on the campuses of their mentor IITs at Kanpur, Delhi and Kharagpur respectively, and the IITs at Indore and Himachal Pradesh will begin the session from the academic year 2009-10.

While the new IITs will cost the Centre a whopping Rs 6,080 crore over a six-year period, the cost of the new varsities is yet to be finalised, sources added. As for the new Central varsities, a single ordinance will cover all of them.

In the case of the new Central varsities, while 12 would be entirely new, the remaining four will be converted from the existing state universities. The four state universities identified for change-over are: Sagar University in Madhya Pradesh, Garhwal University in Uttrakhand, Goa University in Goa and Bilaspur University in Chhattisgarh.

The Cabinet also gave in-principle approval for taking over the Institute of Technology in Banaras Hindu University and converting it into an IIT by integrating it into the IIT system.

14% OBC students enter IIT through general category

MUMBAI: A large chunk of students who made it to the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) this year are from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category.

A post-admission analysis at the Indian Institutes of Technology has revealed that almost 14 per cent of those from the general category are OBCs.

These students got through the Joint Entrance Examination own their own -- and in the general category at that -- without the help quota.

This, when the Union Human Resource Development ministry had plans to set aside 9 per cent seats for the OBCs in Central institutions from the academic session beginning 2008.

The analysis showed that a total of 990 OBC students qualified from the general  category. However, only 876 of them attended counselling process and only 590 of them enrolled, for reasons ranging from not getting their choice of discipline to not being allotted the institute of their preference.