Senior faculty members of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here have said that IITs were not getting enough tribal students and it was time the HRD Ministry looked at opening large number of schools to educate them and give them a chance to compete for higher education.
It was not new that this year there was shortage of ST students for admissions. Every year there is a five to ten per cent shortage of ST students, they said.
"Therefore, our humble request to the HRD Ministry is to open large number of schools for tribal children to give them primary and secondary education, so even that five to 10 per cent can be filled in without compromising the institutions' standards," they added.
"Lowering cut-off marks for admission to these technical institutions is not going to help ST students now," they said.
The cut-off for general category students was 180 marks while it was much lower for SC/ST students at 104 out of 489, the total score.
According to IIT Chennai Director M S Ananth, admissions for SCs is already complete in all the seven IITs and there was a shortage of ST students in ISM-Dhanbad IT-Banaras Hindu University.
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"It is a usual phenomenon and happens every year and here was nothing new," he said.
The Human Resource Ministry had, last week, asked IITs to fill up vacant reserved category seats by lowering cut-off marks.