The placement season for the next batch of technocrats at the Adityapur-based National Institute of Technology (NIT- Jamshedpur) will start in September instead of July, a delay of two months, because of the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

Professor-in-charge of the training and placement cell, Prahlad Prasad, said the placements for the 2017- 2021 batch would begin only in September.

“For the first time, the recruitment drive will get delayed due to the pandemic. The training and placement cell is in touch with recruiters. Most of them have agreed to participate in the recruitment drive from September,” Prasad told The Telegraph Online.

The batch-size for the 2017-2021 batch comprises 600 BTech students. Another 100 students are from the MTech and MCA (Masters in Computer Applications) stream.

Sources in NIT said the passing out students of the previous batch (2016-2020), who had impressive placements, about 91 per cent, despite the lockdown, would join their companies in July-August.

NIT, a premier tech cradle of this region with the status of a deemed university, is currently conducting online final-semester examinations for the passing out batch. The students appearing for the online examinations will get their results by the end of this month. The students had left for their homes before the lockdown was imposed on March 25.

The last leg of recruitments between March and May for the outgoing batch (2016-2020) was also affected due to the lockdown. The recruiters contacted students online.

The average CTC for the outgoing batch of 2020 was Rs 8.7 lakh per annum. Statistics available from the training and placement cell reveal that around 120 recruiters had participated in the placement drive.