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Soon, There May Be Seats Reserved For Women Students At The IITs

To fix the gender imbalance.
Students in IIT Mumbai.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Students in IIT Mumbai.

For years, students and teachers have often raised the diversity problem in IITs. There's a gender imbalance in the premier engineering institute, and one cannot deny that.

However, to fix that, a panel has recommended reservation for girl students.

The committee is learnt to have suggested creating up to 20 percent supernumerary seats for girls out of the total number of seats.

"The 20% supernumerary seats will be filled by female candidates who have qualified JEE-Advanced. Also, they should be in the top 20 percentile in their respective board exams," a source told Hindustan Times.

The recommendation of the committee will be taken up in the meeting of the joint admission board (JAB) for a final decision, which will decide whether the reservation will come in effect from this year or from 2018.

The panel has said that the number of seats for male candidates will not be affected with this move and this will help IITs achieve the 1 lakh target by 2020.

According to reports, women only form 10% of the total student intake for undergraduate programmes. In 2015, while over 1,000 cracked the examination (roughly 10% of the total 10,000 seats), only 840 female students (coming up to 8%) made it to the institutes in 2016-17.

In 2012, IITs had planned to pick girls over boys in the IIT entrance exam if their scores are tied. Even four years after the proposal, the gender gap hasn't reduced.

(With inputs from Agencies)

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.