Scheduled Caste candidates reserve date in IIT history

Probably for the first time ever, seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in various centres of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) will be filled up from the word go.

This became evident after the joint entrance examination (JEE) results were declared on Wednesday.

The IITs, this year, will not have to prepare a separate preparatory list for SC candidates as the number of successful candidates is more than the available seats reserved for the SCs.

Preparatory list includes those candidates who did not score enough in the JEE to make it to the reserved seats and are given further relaxation on the grades so that they could be put through training and admitted to the IITs to fill the quota.

“To my knowledge, this is probably the first time that we have not had to prepare a preparatory course list for SC candidates,” said IIT Bombay director Devang Khakhar.  “This year, we have more SC candidates qualifying than the number of seats available.” IIT Madras director, MS Ananth, concurred with him that this could be a first.

SC/ST candidates along with students with physical disabilities (PD) get 50% relaxation from the general category candidates.

A further 50% relaxation is given to those who do not qualify so that they can be sent for the preparatory course. In 2009, a little over 1,000 SC and ST seats had to be converted to the preparatory course as not many could qualify.

All the IITs, IT-BHU and ISMU-Dhanbad conduct a one-year preparatory course for SC/ST/ and students with physical disabilities who do not make it to the common or the reserved category merit lists.

This year, of the 42,800 SC candidates who appeared, 1,773 have qualified to seek admission to 1,426 seats, ie 15% of the total number of reserved seats — 9,509.

Of the 1,773 SCs, around 120 made it to the common merit list. The remaining 1,653 qualified for the reserved seats after the prescribed relaxation of 50%.

Kanishak Kataria, with an all-India rank of 44 topped the SC category. (From IIT Bombay zone alone, 404 SCs qualified, of which 22 got into the general category and 382 made it to the reserved seats.) In 2009, only 967 SCs had qualified all over India. Another 473 SCs qualified for the preparatory course.

As far as ST candidates are concerned, of the 15,975 candidates who took JEE, only 517 qualified to seek admission to 713 seats. Of these, scores of 498 had to be relaxed by 50%. Another 262 have qualified for the preparatory course.