New Delhi: The Indian Institutes of Technology has decided to admit more Women from the 2018 academic session in order to check the decline of women candidates at the premier engineering institutions of the country.
The Joint Admission Board (JAB) of the IITs has decided, on Saturday, to approve a quota of over and above the actual intake of seats for women in a phased manner, most probably increasing it to 20 per cent by year 2026.
The decline:
- Around 8.8 per cent women were admitted to IITs in 2014.
- The figure went up to just 9 per cent in 2015.
- In 2016 it again came down to 8 per cent.
- Concerned by the slump in number of female students entering IITs, the JAB has set up a panel under the chairmanship of professor Timothy Gonsalves to find ways to rectify the situation in the institutes.
What concerned authorities said:
According to one of the JAB members, “The Supernumerary Quota has been created to combat gender imbalance. Already the number of female aspirants taking the entrance is less. Women will be admitted through the supernumerary quota, even if they do not qualify under general category.”
A senior official of the ministry of human resource development said, “the 20 per cent supernumerary seats that will be implemented in a phased manner would be filled by women candidates who have qualified Joint Engineering Entrance (Advanced) are placed in the top 20 percentile in their respective board exams.”
The ministry has, however, assured that this step will not affect the existing number of seats for male candidates as the supernumerary seats will be additional seats reserved for female candidates. “We expect increased interest among female candidates following this reservation,” said the HRD official.
It is worth mentioning that the IIMs too witnessed a three-year low of gender diversity in 2016 despite ongoing efforts.
The supernumerary quota:
- It will start at 14 per cent from 2018.
- Under this and additional rule has also been stated that the seats vacated by women will be filled by other women only.
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