Minorities to have 4.5% reservation in IITs from this year

Updated on: Saturday, February 25, 2012

The IIT-JEE committee has decided to to implement the 4.5% reservation for minorities within 27% meant for other backward classes from this year. Those minority candidates who had submitted the application forms online and have not mentioned their status can do so on the IIT-JEE website — http://jee.iitd.ac.in/obcminority.php — by giving an undertaking that they have a minority status and would submit the certificate before the exam on April 8.The undertaking has to be given to the respective zonal offices before March 20.

The Chairman of IIT-JEE G.B.Reddy said since this 4.5% reservation is a new development the application forms do not carry this information and hence he has asked the students to submit the undertaking first and later submit the certificate to claim reservation. He stated that they have given enough time for candidates to get the certificate and in the instance of non submission of cetificate the candidates will not be considered for the category as a separate list will be prepared.

The state governments will have to decide who fits into the minority category and the certificate issued by the Tehsildarwill be valid. On implementation of this reservation around 430 minority candidates are likely to get admission in the 17 IITs across the country with 9500 seats as per last year's figure.The final figure according to the Chairman will be available after March 25th when the IITs have been asked to submit the list of availability of seats. some IITs will increase seats and others introduce new programmes like IIT-Hyderabad whohave written to the Chairman about introduction of two new programmes this year namely Civil Engineering and Engineering Science with 25 seats each.

So far 5,07,607 applications have been received by the IITs, slight increase from last year's figure. But the final number may change as some candidates have applied in two zones, while some others have failed to provide the necessary documents. They are writing to all such candidates to choose the zone they wish to appear in and also submit the documents immediately.

Kanpur zone saw maximum applicants this year. Madras zone received about 78,000 applications. Last year, Bombay zone received the maximum applications. “They have altered the allocation of cities, where exam will be held, to different zones to ensure equal workload,” according to the IIT-JEE Chairman.

Minorities to have 4.5% reservation in IITs from this year

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