Filling up seats in IITs, NITs: HC reserves order on plea

The Delhi High Court today reserved its order a plea seeking a direction to IITs and NITs to follow Centre's direction that a common database be prepared to ensure that seats do not remain vacant if a student takes admission in two different engineering colleges.
"We will pass an order," a bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said.
The court was hearing an interim application, filed in a pending PIL, by Rajeev Kumar through lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
It has been alleged in the plea that IITs have been opposing "tooth and nail" the suggestion that a common database be prepared of all the candidates who clear the IIT and the NIT entrance examination.

The common database will enable engineering colleges, run by IITs and NITs, in filling up the vacant seats in case a student takes up admission in two different colleges.
"Suppose, a student takes up admission in an IIT in Chemical Engineering and later, takes admission in Computer Science stream in a NIT-run college. The common database will alert the IIT/NIT about the dual admissions and one of the subsequent admissions will get canceled automatically," Bhushan said.

This will stop the waste of "scarce" natural resource and the vacant seat will go other deserving candidate, he said.
The counsel for IIT, however, opposed the plea saying that it will open the "Pandora's box" and said that IITs only come to about the vacancies by the mid of September when students do not attend the classes.

The Union Human Resources Development Ministry, in 2013, had come out with an order to ensure that seats, in the event of dual admissions, do not remain vacant in an academic year.
Earlier, a PIL was filed in 2010 alleging irregularities and lack of transparency in admission process adopted by the IITs.