IIT-JEE Admissions 2025: Seats allotted exceed sanctioned capacity in most IITs

For instance, IIT Bombay allotted 1,364 seats against its sanctioned 1,360 total seat capacity, while IIT Delhi allotted 1,241 seats compared to 1,239. Similarly, IIT Kharagpur admitted 1923 students against 1919 sanctioned seats, IIT Hyderabad admitted 631 students against 630 total students, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad admitted 1,213 students against 1,210 seats, and IIT Madras allotted 1,124 seats against its capacity of 1,121. IIT Kanpur also admitted five more students (1215), as against the sanctioned capacity of 1210.

On the other hand, IIT BHU Varanasi admitted only one student than their sanctioned capacity – 1588 against 1589.

This comes against the backdrop of a steady increase in IIT intake over the years. Last year, a total of 17,760 seats were on offer, of which 17,695 were filled. The intake itself had risen by nearly 375 from the previous year’s 17,385 seats. In fact, it has only been once that no seats were left vacant at the IITs — back in 2019.

This trend reflects the Joint Seat Allocation Authority’s (JoSAA) practice of balancing withdrawals and ensuring maximum utilisation of seats, but it also raises questions about the capacity management within top engineering institutes.

Meanwhile, the government, while announcing the budget in February this year also said that it would develop infrastructure to facilitate the education of another 6,500 students across five third-generation IITs (set up after 2014) – IIT Palakkad, Dharwad, Jammu, Bhilai, and Tirupati. These seats will be added in phases over five years and would be mainly at the undergraduate or BTech level.

The latest data also shows that the overall representation of women has improved marginally, with 3,664 female candidates securing seats, accounting for 20.15 per cent of total allotments. Institutes such as IIT Tirupati (21.57%), IIT Roorkee (20.50%), and IIT Madras (21.09%) recorded higher female participation than the national average.

As per JIC 2025 report, the total seat capacity in IITs in 2025 was 18,160, including 3,632 female-only (supernumerary) seats. In the final (sixth) round, 18,188 seats were allotted, including nine supernumerary DS seats, 11 supernumerary foreign nationals/ OCI/ PIO (F) seats and 12 supernumerary minimum cut-off seats. Additionally, 96 OCI/ PIO (I) candidates (treated as Indian nationals) secured admission.

A total of 2,58,765 candidates registered for JoSAA 2025. They filled 3,33,98,917 choices in total. Among them, 51,216 were qualified in JEE (Advanced) 2025 and filled 73,28,847 choices.