Women's strength in IITs still poor

New Delhi: Despite efforts by the Narendra Modi government to increase the number of female students in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), it is understood that more than 60 per cent of the seats reserved for them went vacant in the past academic year.

Human resource development ministry statitics revealed that out of 2,264 female candidates, who were allotted seats in IITs in 2016, only 848 joined the institutes.

Sources said that the government was trying hard to improve enrolment of women in technical institutes and hoped to see an increase in their intake, this academic year.

The government hopes to improve the number of female candidates as the admission process for the current year is not yet over. In an effort to improve female enrolment in the B.Tech programmes in IITs, a committee was constituted by Joint Admission Board to suggest suitable measures.

The report of the committee was considered by the IIT council in its 51st meeting held in April  2017 where it was decided female enrolment would be increased from the current 8 per cent to 14 per cent in 2018-19, 17 per cent in 2019-20 and 20 per cent in 2020-21 by creating supernumerary seats.  The increase won’t affect the existing number of seats for male candidates and the changes will be implemented over a maximum of eight years.

The elite engineering colleges are currently male-dominated, with only 800 of the 4,500 girls who crack the JEE (advanced), every year, joining the IITs.  Currently, women make up just 8 per cent of the student strength at 23 IITs across the country.

IITs are considered to be among India’s best institutes and regularly ranked high in various global surveys. However over the years, the issue of a very low number of women students has plagued the IITs.