Over 10k seats in IITs, 8.7k seats in NITs remained vacant in last two years: Edu Minister Pradhan 

As many as 10,000 seats — that's the number of seats that remained vacant in different courses across the various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the last two years. As far as the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are concerned, over 8,700 seats were vacant. This is the information that Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of Education, Government of India, shared on Wednesday, February 9. 

As per a report in PTI, the minister passed on the information via a written response to a question that was raised in the Rajya Sabha. As per the data, from the 5,484 seats that were vacant in 2020-21, 476 seats in UG courses (BTech), 3,229 seats in PG courses and 1,779 in PhD courses remained vacant.       

The number of vacant IIT seats in 2021-2022 was slightly lower than that of previous years, the number stood at 5,296, out of which, 361 seats in BTech, 3,083 seats in PG and 1,852 seats in PhD courses were vacant.   

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When it comes to NITs in 2020-21, 3,741 seats were vacant. The number went up to 5,012 in 2021-22. Maximum seats remained vacant in PG courses, the numbers were 2,487 in 2020-21 and 3, 413 in 2021-22. 

“The premier engineering colleges like IITs, NITs and IIITs impart education and research in science and technology subjects and are categorised as Institutions of National Importance. The admission to various programmes in these institutions are strictly offered only to deserving candidates based on the ranking/ other parameters, who fulfil the required eligibility criteria,” the minister said, as quoted by PTI.