IIT test for common counselling
The government has asked the Indian Institutes of Technology and the National Institutes of Technology to hold common counselling from this year to minimise seats going vacant at these engineering colleges. But the 16 IITs, a notch above the 30 NITs in the pecking order, had defeated such a plan last year and are expected to oppose the latest Union human resource development ministry directive, too. Over 600 seats had remained unoccupied in these tech schools last year, apparently because of separate counselling which allows a candidate to receive offers from an IIT and an NIT at the same time. Such a candidate often hangs on to the coveted IIT seat while waiting to see whether he gets the subject of his choice in one of the NITs, which declare their merit lists a little later. He thus blocks both seats and quits one only at the last moment, giving the institute hardly any time to fill it before the session begins. Under the proposed common counselling, a student will recei