The best engineering institute in our country has a dirty secret. The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur was secretly and illegally keeping aside a discretionary admission quota for children of its professors and staff members for over four decades, admitting dozens of students even though they had not fared well in the IIT-Joint Entrance.
This discovery was made by Hindustan Times after accessing certain documents using the RTI Act which showed that the countrys oldest IIT " started in 1951" blocked 25 per cent of its seats in popular five-year integrated science courses (up to M.Sc level) for handpicked nominees, even asIIT aspirants had to struggle to clear the IIT-JEE for admission.
Other things which came to light were that those who got admission under this quota between 2003 and 2005 did not even need to appear for the entrance exam.
However, due to pressure the Joint Admission Board of all IITs, which organises entrance examination, and the launch of RTI Act, this illegal quota got abandoned.
As per a report in Hindustan Times, the documents revealed that this premier institute admitted 88 students through the secret quota between 1998 and 2005, including 50 in 2003 and 2004. The quota was never revealed in admission brochures unlike all other reservations for backward communities that the IITs have.
Describing it as the most shameful chapter in the history of IITs, a former IIT Kharagpur director said, "I knew about the existence of this practice and tried convincing colleagues to end the quota, but failed."
People like Director of IIT Bhubaneswar and the organising chairman of the IIT-JEE in 2006 have benefited from this quota.
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