IIT to do away with online counselling from 2013

Updated on: Tuesday, November 27, 2012

In addition to a new entry test, the Indian Institutes of Technology are set to introduce another change in the admission process from the next academic year. The country's premier technical institutions have decided to do away with online counselling for admission, which was followed for several years. From 2013, all applicants will have to go to the respective IITs in person for admission.

The decision was made after two candidates impersonated others in JEE 2012 to secure admissions into IIT-Bhuvaneshwar and ISM-Dhanbad this year. A girl had sought admission to ISM-Dhanbad by manipulating another candidate's IIT-JEE 2012 admit card. She had bought the other candidate's scores, and doctored the photographs, but the institute caught her out when they compared her likeness with photographs available with them, and checked her thumbprints. Officials said ISM-Dhanbad could have been misled during the spot admission process. A boy who sought admission at IIT-Bhuvaneshwar fled the scene when the institute called his bluff, JEE 2013 officials said. Each year more than five lakh candidates take the test to qualify for around 10,000 seats in the 15 IITs, Banaras Hindu University and Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad. IIT administrators say that a few aspirants occasionally try fraudulent means.

"Online counselling is one of the factors facilitating such incidents. Students will only be allowed to fill the options online, and will have physical counselling at the seven IITs," H C Gupta, organising chairman of 2013 JEE (Advanced), told TOI. All candidates will have to produce original certificates for verification during counselling. "Unless the candidate comes in person we cannot identify fake students," he added.

After the fake students were identified, JEE 2013 officials sent a communication to all IITs to check whether any other students had manipulated the JEE 2012 admit cards. On November 20 when the first year students sat for their first semester exam, IIT-Madras faculty verified the identity of its first year students with photographs obtained during JEE 2012.

Academics dean of IIT-Madras K Ramamurthy said the institutes had come across instances of students trying to gain admission through fraudulent means in the past.

He said the IITs had pulled up such candidates before they gained admission by verifying their photographs when they came for the test. "Efforts are also on to verify the students' identities biometrically," Ramamurthy said.

IIT to do away with online counselling from 2013

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