IITs May Soon Have Reservation For Girls

To solve the issue of low number of female students in IITs, a panel has recommended reservation of seats for girl students. According to Hindustan Times, in a meeting, a committee looking into the issue asked the IITs to address the problem.

The committee has proposed to reserve 20 per cent supernumerary seats for girls out of the total number of seats. Sources said, “The 20% supernumerary seats will be filled by female candidates who have qualified JEE-Advanced. Also, they should be in the top 20 percentile in their respective board exams.”

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To take all aspects related to the issue under consideration, the committee will sit with the joint admission board (JAB) to make a final decision. This meeting is scheduled to decide since when the reservation will come in effect -- it could be from this year or from 2018. Not all IITs are restricted to have 20% reservation seats as the decision will be taken on the basis of individual facilities available and the need. However, the limit for girls in the institutes will be up to 20%.

To increase the number of girls, the committee is also looking into the school level. To ensure long-term effect, they have made certain other recommendations to check on girl students and the facilities they get prior to entering IITs. The JAB has already set up a committee to look into the matter.

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A sub-committee under Professor Timothy Gonsalves was formed after it was noticed that the number of girls -- who had cleared JEE-Advanced in 2016 as compared to 2015 -- has fallen by 2%, .

While over 1,000 cracked the examination (roughly 10% of the total 10,000 seats) in 2015, only 840 female students (coming up to 8%) made it to the institutes in 2016-17. As many as 10,500 students landed BTech seats at 23 IITs across the country this time.

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“The number of seats for male candidates will not be affected and this will help IITs achieve the 1 lakh target by 2020. Also, only candidates who have already qualified in JEE-Advanced will be considered,” said a source.

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Feature Image Credit: Indian Express

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