The UPA government promised nine new NITs (National Institutes of Technology)out of which six will be opened in the North-East states not having an NIT. The senior officials informed the reporters that the Human Resource Development Ministry had written to the Chief Ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Meghalaya asking them to allot land to the states for theNITs.
The Ministry had also asked the Chief Ministers of Puducherri, Uttarakhand and Goa for the same. Silchar in Assam and Tripura in Agartala already have such institutes. The performance in the National Level Test conducted by the AIEEE – All India Entrance Engineering Examination is the basis on which the students are admitted in the NITs.
Till the last year 50% of the NITs seats were filled by the domiciled students of the States and based on the population the States where there are no NITs are also allocated reserved seats. Last year for the NITs the HRD ministry altered the admission policy and this step was considered controversial because of the following reasons:
Firstly, because only the NIT Council that is their apex decision making body is allowed to change/modify the admission process and not the HRD Ministry since the institutes are officially independent bodies.
Secondly, the new policy ended the state specific reservations and instead the criterion was the performance in the AIEEE exams.
The Chief Ministers of the Northern states lodged a complaint to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against the end the reservations at the NITs as they anticipated that their states would no longer find representation the NITs.