While the number of students with disability taking part in the counselling process for admissions to engineering colleges has increased by 25 per cent this year, it is still not equal to the number of seats reserved for PwD candidates.
At top colleges, especially Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), usually, there is a fight between a handful of students for every seat. However, the seats reserved for PwD students tend to go vacant almost every year. This year, too, as many as 12 seats reserved for PwD students were converted to respective category candidates. This means, PwD SC, and PwD ST, seats were open to SC and ST students, as there were not enough students with disability who would take these seats.
The counselling process for admissions to engineering colleges (including IITs, National Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, and other centrally funded institutes) saw 1,489 PwD candidates registered in 2021, which rose to 1,861 in 2022. However, it still remained less than the seats reserved for PwD across colleges — 2,708.
Across IITs, a total of 842 PwD candidates were eligible, of which 824 students have been allotted seats and the remaining were re-allocated to non-PwD candidates, said Mukesh Gupta, Chairperson, Local Organizing Committee, CSAB-2022.
Prof. K. Umamaheshwar Rao, chairman of the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB) and director NIT Rourkela told News18, “The number of PwD candidates applying for engineering colleges is lower than the seats allocated. This happens every year. There are many concessions, including time relaxation, availability of scribe, reserved seats, and lower cut-offs for PwD kids in JEE Main and Advanced as well as while counselling rounds, however, many children are not aware of it. We held extensive counselling sessions this year, which resulted in an increase in the number of PwD candidates as well as children from rural and other backward communities applying for JEE exams and corresponding counselling rounds.”
Rise
Total Registration
28%
Participation of PwD candidates
25%
Participation of OBC candidates
37%
Participation of EWS candidates
20%
Participation of SC candidates
21%
Participation of ST candidates
12%
The counselling board held counselling cum awareness sessions, offered special counselling rounds, immersive PDF for PwD candidates, bilingual information brochure, and multi-lingual help centres. The CSAB team also sent SMS, and emails to all JEE Main qualified candidates to inform them about the counselling process. These efforts, they claim, resulted in better participation from students from low-income and socially backward communities.
2021
2022
No. Increase
Percent (%) Increase
ST
11345
12660
1315
12
SC
24670
29946
5276
21
OBC-NCL
52542
71775
19233
37
GEN-EWS
22320
26838
4518
20
OPEN
56324
72848
16524
29
PwD
1489
1861
372
25
The academicians also highlighted that fewer kids from the PwD category in the counselling process are also a result of the low participation of students with disability in JEE Main.
“The change has to start from school. Many children with disabilities do not opt for the science stream and not many get to attend the coaching required to crack entrance exams,” said Rao.
18-year-old Ojas Maheshwari who secured the first rank in JEE Main 2022 in the PwD category with a 99.994 percentile score, in conversation with News18, admitted that he had issues in online classes as he could not lip-read due to masks. He resorts to lip reading as he has 62 per cent hearing loss. Mainstream coaching centres do not have a differently-abled friendly infrastructure.
Mukesh Gupta said that during counselling sessions he found out that many parents do not send their wards to engineering colleges as they do not have the supporting infrastructure to support their child’s needs. Thus, a near-home destination despite low rank is preferred by many.
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