In 2021, eight departments of IIT Delhi received 637 eligible PhD applications from SC/ST/OBC students. None of them were admitted. All the 53 PhD seats in these programmes went to students from the General Category (UR: Unreserved) or Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quota who had sent in 1,362 applications. Such disparities were witnessed across at least nine IITs of the 23 analysed. In IIT Kharagpur, the acceptance rate among General Category students was 11.9%, which is higher than the 3.2% seen among ST students. In IIT Delhi, 52.7% of applicants were from the General Category and they formed 70.5% of the admissions
Acceptance rate
The table lists the applications received for various PhD programmes across communities in 2021 and their acceptance rates (applications admitted/received in %)
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- The acceptance rate in Indore stood at 9.3% for students from historically privileged castes (General Category). It fell to 4.5% and 4.9% for OBC and ST students, respectively, and further down to just 2.8% for SCs
- In Tirupati, Mandi, Bhilai and Goa, no ST student was admitted despite applications crossing hundreds in some cases. A similar trend was observed in Bhilai among SC students
Two ratios
The table lists the PhD applications from a community as a % of total applications received and the admitted PhD applications from a community as a % of total admissions in 2021
- In IIT Indore, while applications from the General Category formed only 41.2% of the total applications, the community formed 63.8% of those admitted. Applications from the SC community were 12% and only 5.5% of admissions were from the community
- In Bhilai, 10.9% of the applications were from the SC community and they formed 0% of the admissions
- In all the IITs chosen, the % of ST among admissions was fewer than % of STs among applications
- In all the IITs chosen, except Bhilai and Goa, the % of UR among admissions was higher than % of UR among applications
Zero admissions
The tables list select departments under various IITs which received a considerable number of eligible applications (No.) from the SC/ST/OBC categories but failed to admit even one applicant. IIT Delhi, for instance, did not admit any applicant from the ST category under the Dept. of Electrical Engineering despite receiving 34 applications. The university did not admit even one PhD candidate from the SC and OBC communities in the Biochemical Engineering & Biotech department despite receiving 104 and 171 applications, respectively
Source: Lok Sabha unstarred question number 106 raised by S. Venkatesan, CPI(M) MP from the Madurai constituency. With inputs from Pon Vasanth B.A.
