Common counselling for admissions in IITs, NITs: Centre to HC

The Centre today told the Delhi High Court that it has decided to have a common counselling for admissions in technical institutes, Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs).
The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in its oral submission before a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice R S Endlaw said that "necessary infrastructure to facilitate the common counselling will be ensured well within time" for the academic year 2015-2016.
"To facilitate joint seat allocation process between IITs and NITs for the academic year 2015-2016 and to ensure that the process can be taken smoothly and suitably monitored, MHRD held coordination meetings.

"As outcome of the meetings, it has been decided to have common counselling/joint seat allocation of IITs, NITs, IITs and some other GFTIS(government funded technical institutions) with effect from academic year 2015-2016," Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain, appearing for MHRD, said.
Taking note of the Centre's submission, the court listed the PIL on April 8, for final disposal.
The Centre's response came in pursuance to the court's direction, which had asked it to take instruction on the issue common counselling after it came to it through a PIL by Rajiv Kumar, an IIT-Kharagpur professor.

Earlier, the court on March 18 had observed that it is ironical that IITs are not able to make a software for common counselling for admission for the institutes and NITs.

The bench had made the remark after counsel for IIT had said that they are in the process of making a software which, after being thoroughly tested, will be used for common counselling for admission.
IIT had said that the software was not ready as National Informatics Centre can't prepare it and the government agency was not that effective.
Earlier, IITs had submitted that it would not be able to hold common counselling for the year 2015-2016.