New Delhi: As many as 66 reserved seats are falling vacant in the six new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) this year and all these will be accommodated during the next academic session, the Joint Admission Board (JAB) of the IITs said on Wednesday.

After a marathon meeting of the officials of all the 13 IITs and Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry authorities, it was decided to transfer the vacant seats to the next academic year.

"It was observed that the issue of vacancies of seats in the IIT system is a matter of concern and, therefore, a very comprehensive review is necessary. While doing so the most important point to be kept in mind is that the IITs' brand equity should not be diluted," IIT Kanpur director Sanjay Dhande told reporters here.

"All the seven old IITs have filled all their seats for the year 2008-09 in the regular as well as preparatory courses. As for the new IITs, the issue of 66 vacancies in seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was reviewed," Dhande said.

IIT Kharagpur Director D. Acharya said that the vacancy in the reserved seats "in the six new IITs will be made available for the admission exercise for 2009-10 as a one-time measure."

Authorities said that of 47 of the 66 seats are for Scheduled Tribes and the rest are for Scheduled Castes.

"There is no vacancy in OBC (Other Backward Classes) seats. Though we lowered the cut-off slightly, yet it was a little difficult to find suitable Scheduled Tribes candidates. Hence this vacancies," IIT Delhi Director Surendra Prasad told sources.

IIT Roorkee Director S.C. Saxena said that before taking a decision on this the JAB took into account various factors like infrastructure, classrooms, faculty and other implementation problems this year.

"Though the old IITs have come forward to mentor the six new ones, there are several difficulties in conducting the regular classes of these institutions at locations away from the main campuses," Dhande added.

The meeting, which was also attended by the directors of the IT Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad - both follow the IITs' joint entrance examination, decided that they too will follow the principle of shifting vacant reserved seats to the next academic year.

As with the new IITs, there are 82 seats falling vacant this year in the above two institute: 14 in IT-BHU and 68 in ISM.

Six new IITs were launched during this academic session in addition to the seven already existing ones - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati. The six new IITs are at Gandhinagar, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Punjab, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. IANS