Kota: Kota in Rajasthan is known as a hub for coaching centres for entrance exams for top engineering institutes in the country, but the state is lagging behind in the number of seats in NIT and IIT. According to available statistics, Rajasthan, the largest state in the country ranks 15 in terms of engineering seats.
IIT Jodhpur and MNIT Jaipur together have 1488 seats while smaller states than Rajasthan like Delhi, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Assam, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu are ahead with more seats.
Education expert Dev Sharma believes that skilled and innovative engineers can be prepared only in top engineering institutes, such as IIT and NIT and Rajasthan is lagging in engineering seats.
Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Maharashtra collectively account for 23 per cent of the engineering seats in IITs and NITs across the country, totalling 9,886 seats. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of seats, with 3,933 available. Notably, it is the only state in India with two IITs and one NIT located in Allahabad. West Bengal ranks second with 3,652 engineering seats, while Maharashtra comes in third with 2,301 seats.
Dev Sharma states that candidates can benefit from up to a 50 per cent home state quota for NIT seats. He pointed out that, compared to Uttar Pradesh, which has two IITs, and West Bengal, which has two NITs, Rajasthan—population approximately 8.5 crores—only has IIT Jodhpur and MNIT Jaipur, accounting for fewer than 1,500 total seats. According to him, ideally, Rajasthan should have either two IITs or two NITs, or the number of seats in the existing IITs should be increased.
