The State Government increased the students intake at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology (VSSUT), Burla, and Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology (IGIT), Sarang, by 440 seats on Thursday.
This comes close on the heels of a similar increase in the College of Engineering and Technology (CET) in January. The Employment and Technical Education and Training (ETET) Department announced an increase of 320 seats in VSSUT and 120 seats in IGIT. “The seats are being increased in the government engineering colleges to ensure that the meritorious students get a chance to pursue technical education at reasonable expense,” said a senior ETET official.
In VSSUT, the seats has been increased by 60 in electrical, civil, mechanical and telecommunication engineering under-graduate courses. In information technology under-graduate course, it has been increased from 40 to 60. A new course in Metallurgy and Materials engineering has also been introduced with an intake capacity of 60 from 2013-14 session. Information and Communications Technology PG course has got 18 more seats and an Integrated MSc programme in Basic Science with 18 seats has been started.
Similarly intake in IGIT’s civil, chemical and metallurgical and materials engineering will go up by 30 seats each and that in electrical and mechanical engineering will be increased from 45 to 60 seats each. Welcoming the step, IGIT civil engineering professor Bikas Panda said they had requested the State Government to grant the college the unitary university status for greater autonomy.
With this, the total number of seats in government engineering colleges will go up to 790. Around 110 seats will be added through lateral entry in 2013-14 and by the end of 2013-14, the total number of seats in government colleges will be around 900. All the increased seats will be reflected in this year’s OJEE’s seat matrix.