IIT-Kharagpur plans to admit more students

The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, has drawn up plans to increase its intake of students by 10 per cent a year over the next five years.

This, the institute hopes, will keep its doors open for a sufficiently large number of general candidates, given the Centre's proposal to introduce a 27 per cent quota for other backward classes in 20 central universities, the IITs and the Indian institutes of management.

"We have drawn up a prospective plan to increase our intake by around 200 students, 80 of whom will be undergraduate students," Sisir K Dube, director, IIT Kharagpur, told Business Standard.

Though the decision was taken before the recent announcement of the 27 per cent quota, Dube said this would dilute the negative impact of the proposed quota on general candidates.

"The student intake will largely depend upon the rate at which we are able to create our physical infrastructure and faculty availability. We will also introduce new courses, thereby increasing our intake further," he said, adding, "if other things permit, we may also increase our intake up to 20 per cent every year."

Currently, IIT Kharagpur takes in around 5,500 students for all its programmes. After implementing the existing quota of 22.5 per cent for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and an additional 27 per cent for OBCs, only 50.5 per cent of seats will be left for general candidates.