Now engineering aspirants can�t accept IIT seats without surrendering NIT seats

From this year onwards engineering aspirants can hope to have more seats at IITs and NITs because of coordination mechanism agreed by the two last week.

The two of the most sought after names in engineering education have come together to stop candidates from holding a seat in IIT and NIT, simultaneously. According to this new initiative, now more candidates with lower score can also compete to secure a seat in either of two renowned institutions of the country.

An aspirant with good score/rank in the JEE Main and JEE-Advanced will not be able to get admission in IIT unless he/she surrenders his/her candidature in NIT and vice-versa. This is the first when IITs and NITs have agreed to share their admission data.

A senior HRD ministry official said, “Till last year, many candidates would pay the admission fee for their allotted seats in an IIT and as well as an NIT and decide where they want to join at the last moment. Since students don’t bother to cancel admission in either one of the institutions, this leads to seats falling vacant once the session begins and deprives many candidates with lower JEE rank from taking admission.”

As per GB Reddy, last year’s JEE Chairman, in 2012 nearly 320 seats went unbagged across 15 IITs and in 2011 nearly almost 757 seats went vacant. This new initiative of IITs and NITs is just limited to sharing data, but their other admission process will be completely different and independent.