82,000 more aspirants for IIT-JEE

Chennai: The number of students aspiring to enter the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has seen a massive increase this year with more than 4.72 lakh boys and girls registering for the highly competitive Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) scheduled for April 11. The figure is an impressive 82,000-odd higher than the number of candidates who had applied for the examination last year

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“We have received 4,72,103 applications from across seven zones. 1,18,612 applicants are girls. Last year around 3.9 lakh candidates had taken the examination of which around 98,000 were girls,” professor TS Natarajan, organising chairman, JEE 2010, told The Times of India on Thursday. The 2010 edition of the JEE is being organised by IIT Madras.

Significantly, the number of candidates belonging to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) is also higher this year with over 1.32 lakh of them registering for the examination. Of them, 17,715 hail from creamy layer families and 1,14,544 belong to the non-creamy layer section. In 2009, the number of OBC candidates was 1.07 lakh.

“The increase in the number of applicants could be because the number of seats available will be higher this year with the full implementation of the 27% quota for OBC candidates. Approximately 10,000-odd seats will be available in 15 IITs, compared to 8,000-odd seats that were available last year,” Natarajan explained.

More than 80,000 candidates would be appearing from the IIT Bombay zone followed by 73,800-plus aspirants from the IIT Delhi zone. The number of candidates from the IIT Madras zone, comprising the southern states, is 68,500. “You can’t compare this data with the zone-wise figures of the past years because some of the zones have been reorganised (with their jurisdictional boundaries changing) now,” he said.

The JEE will be held across 1,026 centres in the country and one in Dubai. “We had plans of conducting the examination in Singapore but could not proceed. The problem is that we have to conduct the examination simultaneously across centres and make provisions for the time difference. For instance, in Dubai the examination will begin at 7.30am, unlike here where it will start by 9am,” Natarajan said.

Courtesy: Times of India