Several BTech and MTech seats in premier public institutions such as IITs and NITs remain vacant, with academics pointing to issues such as continuing outdated intake capacities in less popular courses.

Data accessed by The Telegraph under the RTI Act showed that 276 seats in BTech and 1,165 seats in MTech and MSc courses remained vacant this year in 13 IITs. Similarly, 401 seats in BTech and 2,604 seats in MTech/MSc courses remained vacant in 19 NITs.

In some of the IITs, the vacancy is much higher than others. In IIT Dhanbad, there are 1,125 seats in BTech of which 72 are vacant in 2024-25. The nearly 100-year-old institution, which was known as the Indian School of Mines (ISM) before being converted to an IIT in 2016, also has 234 vacant seats in postgraduate courses. There are nearly 600 seats in MTech (see chart).

In 2023-24 and 2022-23, 53 and 67 seats remained vacant in the institute respectively. Similarly, there are 37 seats vacant in BTech courses in IIT Guwahati which had 962 seats this year. Some of the IITs have not provided information on their seat vacancies.

There have been huge vacancies of seats at the MTech level in most of the IITs, including the older ones which have a greater reputation. The number of postgraduate seats remaining vacant in IIT Bombay was 332 in 2022-23, 345 in 2023-23 and 257 in 2024-25. Similarly, IIT Delhi had 416 seats vacant in 2024-25 while the number of vacant seats was 438 and 376 in 2023-24 and 2022-23 respectively. Both the tech schools have about 800 postgraduate seats each.

The NITs, too, have a similar story.

NIT Surathkal and NIT
Rourkela, considered to be elite among the NITs, have 24 and 28 vacancies in BTech courses with 945 and 1,065 seats respectively.

For several branches in some of the IITs, there are very few takers, said Rajeev Kumar, a former faculty member of IIT Kharagpur who fought a case in the Supreme Court for transparency in the Joint Entrance Examination conducted by the IITs. Such seats should be reduced, he said.

“Each seat remaining vacant means denial to several admission seekers. It means a wastage of academic and infrastructure resources at public cost,” he said. Kumar added that this problem could be addressed to a great extent. The IITs should analyse the profile of admission seekers across the programmes of study and appropriately adjust seats.

The number of vacancies is comparatively lower in BTech than in Masters because of common counselling. A student cannot block more than one seat at any point because of common counselling for BTech courses in IITs and NITs.

In MTech courses, there is no common counselling. Kumar said the IITs and NITs should come together for common counselling for MTech. He said these are seats vacant at the time of admission. The number will increase within a year because of dropouts in MTech courses.

A faculty member of IIT Delhi said some of the students do show up for admission even after blocking the seat during the counselling. “It is possible that some students get the academic programme of their choice in a reputable private institution or a foreign university. But their number could be very less,” he said.

He said the public sector undertakings (PSUs) select a lot of MTech students for jobs, which leads to the dropout of a number of students during the course.

The IITs and NITs charge an upfront seat allocation fee (SAF) from students during the counselling process before they take admission to BTech courses in the allotted institution.

A Dalit student last year failed to pay the SAF to secure admission to IIT Dhanbad and had to approach the Supreme Court. Several organisations have demanded that the SAF be withdrawn. However, the government defended the requirement of the advance payment of fees before admission saying it helps in checking dropouts and vacancies.

In a written reply in Rajya Sabha during the last winter session, minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar said the SAF was aimed at ensuring only serious candidates accept the seats. However, the vacancy data shows that the SAF is not helping to check the vacancy of seats. The IIT faculty member said SAF should not be continued given the vacancy of seats.