New Delhi, July 25: With a view to improve the international standing of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the IIT Council has decided to provide opportunity for the eligible foreign students to study in the IITs.
For this purpose, it has been decided to focus on the neighbouring countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Singapore, UAE and Ethiopia. Under this initiative, JEE (advanced) exam will be conducted in these countries and eligible foreign students would be given opportunity to take the exam. Only such candidates who qualify in this exam would be offered admission to study in the IITs subject to the following:
i. The entire cost of admission of the foreign students may be recovered from the student fee which may or may not be covered by a scholarship. There shall be no additional cost to Government on account of these admissions.
ii. There shall be no reduction in the seats available for students in India while providing admissions to foreign students. These seats would be considered as supernumerary seats.
iii. There shall be no discrimination in giving facilities between Indian and foreign students.
Further, IIT Bombay has been designated as the National Coordinator for coordinating the visit of IIT teams to these Countries with the Indian Missions abroad, so that the students in these countries are made aware of the advantages of studying in the IITs. It is expected that the above initiative will become operational from academic year 2017-18.
This information was given by the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Shri Prakash Javadekar today in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question.
