New Delhi: The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has issued instructions to the Central Counseling Board (CCB) 2008 directing it to fill the outside State Quota seats in all the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) on an All-India merit basis.

Admissions to the 20 NITs are made on the basis of the All India Engineering Entrance Exam (AIEEE) conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

Till 2007, the seats in an NIT used to be filled by allocating 50 percent of the seats to the eligible candidates of the state where an NIT is located and rest 50 percent of the seats (Outside State quota) were allocated to other states.

These outside State quota seats allocated to different states used to be filled by the eligible candidates from these states based on their State/UT specific AIEEE ranks.

With this system of filling outside State quota seats, there were situations when candidates with higher marks from some states were not getting admissions in the NITs whereas some other candidates from other states with lower marks were getting admissions.

This system had other demerits like, possible situations, where candidates from a particular category with very low marks, from certain states, getting admission while candidates from the same category with much higher marks, but from some other state, being denied admission. The system was also prone to be misused by the scheming elements.

With the changed scenario, there may be a few states which may have apprehensions of not getting representation in various technical institutions at the same level as they were getting earlier.

The exact position depends on exercise of choices by the candidates and hence, would be clear only with the end of 1st round of counselling on July 13, 2008.

However, to address apprehensions of such states, the HRD Ministry has convened a meeting of Technical Education Secretaries of these States and UTs on June 26, 2008.