52 candidates admitted to IIT by mistake: Kapil Sibal

NEW DELHI - Clarifying the withdrawal of offer of admission to 52 candidates from IITs, the human resource development ministry Friday said that the offers were made “erroneously” to the candidates.

In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said that according to the Joint Admission Board, 52 candidates in the general category were offered admission to IIT though they had not qualified in the test.

“Some candidates who wrote the JEE 2010 were erroneously offered admission. The inadvertent error in course allocation pertained to candidates who had not qualified in the architecture/design aptitude test, were offered admission,” Sibal said quoting information from the Joint Admission Board.

“Their admission was later withdrawn and the places were filled by eligible candidates,” he said.

According to the ministry, 41 of the candidates were provided admission in the second list while the rest 11 could not be taken as “they had not filled a large number of choices even though they has been advised to do so during their counselling”.

The minister also said that two of the candidates had gone to court.

“The JEE system has introduced additional checks in their procedure so that such an error does not recur,” Sibal added.