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Updated: Apr 03, 2019 16:00 IST

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will offer about 500 seats to candidates from economically weaker sections this year, IIT officials familiar with the matter said.

In January, the Centre had announced 10% reservations in jobs and educational institutions to economically weaker sections (EWS) from the general category in a move that, it said, was done to provide social equality. The EWS quotas were done without disturbing the existing quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, it clarified.

In case of admission to central institutions, the 10% reservation for EWS entails an overall increase of around 25% seats to ensure the number of general category seats remains unchanged. Implementing the EWS quota can be staggered over two years.

According to the tech school officials, most of the 23 IITs will, on average, implement around 4% EWS quota this year. The Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), for admission to IITs, is scheduled to be held on May 27 and will be conducted by IIT Roorkee.

“With the introduction of EWS category in 2019, IITs are going to offer around 500 seats to EWS candidates, which is approximately 4%. The increase in the total number of seats will be less than 9%. Thus, the total number of seats will cross 12,500,” said Prof A K Chaturvedi, IIT Roorkee director who is the chairman of the Joint Admission Board of JEE (Advanced), 2019.

According to an information brochure for JEE (Advanced) 2019 uploaded by IIT Roorkee on its website on Saturday, the top 2,45,000 candidates from the JEE (Main) would be eligible for the JEE (Advanced) this year. This includes 9,310 candidates for the General-EWS category and 490 for the General-EWS-PwD (physically disabled) category.

In 2018, out of the 2,31,024 candidates shortlisted after the JEE (Main), only 1,65,656 students registered for the JEE (Advanced). A total of 11,279 seats were offered by the IITs in 2018, an increase of 291 seats from 2017.

Siddharth Pandey, chairman of JEE (Advanced) 2019 IIT Delhi said: “This year, IIT Delhi will be implementing 5.6% EWS quota. We will have an overall increase of 105 seats. For this, we are already constructing a girls’ and a boys’ hostel. We have also explored accommodation outside the premises.”

In comparison, IIT Madras implement 4% EWS quota this year. “This will throw infrastructural challenges, but it is doable. Classrooms will not be much of a problem but accommodations have to be worked out,” director Bhaskar Ramamurthy said.

IIT Kharagpur is likely to reserve 3% seats for EWS candidates, said officials requesting anonymity.

“The real infrastructure challenge would come in the second year of EWS implementation when a fresh batch of students would have to be accommodated. In case of new IITs, which are in expansion mode, this would be relatively easier,” says a former IIT director.

“We have proposed to allot funds for additional infrastructure, laboratory equipment and more teachers...,” said R Subhramanyan, higher education secretary in the human resource development ministry.