Modi govt deliberately keeping seats in govt engineering colleges

Congress demands all vacant seats in these colleges be filled in a stipulated time, no academic year of any aspirant gets wasted

Congress on Friday alleged the Modi dispensation is "deliberately" keeping seats of government engineering institutions vacant in order to benefit its "crony" private sector friends and the "failure" to fill seats will "jeopardize" academic lives of lakhs of aspirants.

Pointing out various "anomalies" in filling up the NIT and IIT seats for this academic year, Congress MP Sushmita Dev along with aspiring students met President Pranab Mukherjee and demanded the filling of seats in a time bound manner.

"It is yet another instance of the Narendra Modi government deliberately keeping seats of government engineering institutions vacant in order to benefit its crony private sector friends.

"The Indian National Congress demands that all the vacant seats in these engineering colleges be filled in a stipulated time bound manner so that no academic year of any aspirant gets wasted and go to court immediately," a statement said.

Dev presented a memorandum to Mukherjee and sought his urgent intervention in this matter as the 'Visitor' of all NITs and IITs.

She alleged that private educational institutions have become so important for the BJP government that it is "forcing" young students to even commit suicide or jeopardise their future by dropping.

"Though nearly 4,000 to 5,000 seats of all categories (including General, OBC, SC/ST ) are lying vacant in IIT or NIT and IIITs across the country even after six rounds of counselling of the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA), the HRD Ministry is yet to take a call on conducting 'spot round' to fill up these seats with deserving students, who have cleared competitive exams," the statement said.

The delegation said that this year, though JoSAA website shows that vacant seats in IIT/IIIT and NITs at around 3195 across country, in reality it's three-fold.

They said that many candidates and parents have alleged that HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar have not been responding to their pleas.

"Non-filling thousands seats at these top technical institutes will not only affect the future of aspiring students but also will kill the hopes of many students as they have only two to three attempts possible to get an entry into an IIT/NIT," the statement said.