CHENNAI: Even as Tamil Nadu prides in the performance of Indian Institute of Technology - Madras (IIT-M), students from Tamil Nadu do not account for even 20 per cent of B Tech M Tech (dual degree) or M Tech admissions in the last three years.
The remaining seats are filled by students from other States, especially from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, revealed an RTI reply given by IIT-M to E Muralidharan, a former member of the academic council and an alumnus of the institution.
On an average, only about 16 per cent of B Tech seats were filled by students from Tamil Nadu while Andhra Pradesh and Telangana together accounted for around 40 per cent. The data also showed that around 30 per cent of M Tech (dual degree) seats and 25 per cent of M Tech seats were filled by students from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, as opposed to around 18 and eight per cent from Tamil Nadu, on an average over three years.
Muralidharan said while the distribution is not drastically different in other IITs, the data has still not been made available to him. “Enrolment in all IITs is dominated by students from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. However, when I asked the Ministry of Human Resource Development for admission statistics across the country through an RTI, they responded saying that I should obtain the information from individual IITs,” he said.
He said the Centre should earmark a quota for the State where the IIT is located in. “Earlier there were only five IITs in the country. However, there are 23 IITs now; one almost in every State. The government should allocate half of all seats to people from the State it is situated in,” he said.
“A large amount of taxpayers’ money is spent on every student from IIT and therefore it is only fair that students from the State the institution is built in sees benefits from it,” said E Balagurusamy, a renowned educationalist and a former VC of Anna University.
Speaking to Express, MK Surappa, Vice-Chancellor of Anna University, said that IITs could follow the model that Regional Engineering Colleges (REC) did. After 2002, all RECs, which were funded concurrently by the State and the Centre, were converted into National Institutes of Technology (NIT) that was funded fully by the Centre. RECs had reserved 50 per cent of the seats for students from the State it was located in, but this system was scrapped after they became NITs.
“This quota gave good representations to students from all states in which NITs were built. More students got encouraged to pursue engineering as they had local role models who went to top institutions,” he said. Express could not reach IIT-M management for comments despite repeated calls and messages.