IIT Joint Admission Board has called a meeting

The IIT Joint Admission Board has called a meeting to discuss the possibility of increasing the number of qualified students in Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced, to address the likely situation of seats going vacant.

The results of the JEE Advanced declared by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur on Sunday showed a drastic drop in the number of candidates who qualified. Out of the 1,55,158 students who appeared for Paper 1 and Paper 2 of JEE Advanced, only 18,138 qualified.

Although officials state that 70 per cent of the seats are normally filled, the meeting will address the situation in case  a large number of seats go vacant.Students do not take seats if they do not get their preferred streams. In 2017, 121 seats were vacant out of the 10,998 seats on offer in 23 IITs.

There were 96 vacancies in 2016, 50 in 2015 and three seats went unfilled in 2014.The Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) will announce the first seat allotment on June 27.There are a total of 11,279 seats that are on offer and 18,138 students have qualified the exam.