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IIT seats doubled in 10 years: Minister

For the 2024-25 financial year, over Rs 1,830 crore has been allocated to these five IITs to support their development.

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IIT Hyderabad (Telangana), IIT Kanpur and IIT-BHU Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), IIT Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), and IIT Patna (Bihar) are functioning from their permanent campuses. (File)

The total number of seats across 23 IITs has gone up over the past 10 years, increasing from 65,000 to 1.35 lakh, according to Sukanta Majumdar, Minister of State for Education. He shared this information in a written response in the Lok Sabha on March 10.

The minister was replying to a query raised on whether the government had expanded IIT seats by over 100% and inquired about additional infrastructure developments, particularly in IIT Patna and IIT Delhi, to accommodate 6,500 more students.

Majumdar confirmed that in the 2025-26 Budget, provisions have been made for expanding infrastructure in the five IITs established after 2014. This includes the hostel and academic facilities at IIT Patna.

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“In Budget 2025-26, it has been announced to create additional infrastructure in the five IITs started after 2014 to facilitate education for 6,500 more students. It was inter-alia also announced to expand hostel and other infrastructure capacity at IIT Patna,” Majumdar stated.

He also noted that IIT Hyderabad (Telangana), IIT Kanpur, IIT-BHU Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh), IIT Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), and IIT Patna (Bihar) are now operating from their permanent campuses. For the 2024-25 financial year, over Rs 1,830 crore has been allocated to these five IITs to support their development.

Meanwhile in a major update, the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) launched admissions to undergraduate programs for students who excel in national and international Olympiads. These Olympiads are competitive examinations that assess and challenge students in various academic subjects and skills.

Called ‘Science Olympiad Excellence’ (ScOpE), as per IIT-Madras, this admission will be outside the JEE (Advanced) framework with the students to be admitted from 2025-2026 academic year.

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Similar to admissions through Sports Excellence Admissions and Fine Arts and Culture Excellence modes, ScOpE will also have two supernumerary seats per program of which one seat will be exclusively for women students. The eligibility criteria such as passing of Class 12 and age, among other criteria, remain the same as that of JEE Advanced for the respective year. The candidate also should not have been admitted to an IIT in the previous years.

The applications will be open for the first batch from June 3, 2025. The detailed guidelines and business rules for ScOpE admission are available on the following website.

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