16,000 students refuse to join NIT and IIITs, board refunds Rs 70 crore

Hyderabad: The Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB) has refunded about Rs 70 crore to students who declined to join the National Institutes of Technology , Indian Institutes of Information Technology and other central institutions. About 16,000 students had applied for refund of the acceptance and commitment fee from the CSAB this year.

Joint counselling was held for the first time this year for all the 18 IITs, 31 NITs, 18 IIITs and 18 central institutions, and the ISM Dhanbad.

Refund of acceptance fees of students in the event of final rejection of the allotted seat was not part of the original Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) rules. But on the direction of the Union HRD Ministry, the JoSAA and Central Seat Allocation Board decided to refund acceptance fees of Rs 55,000 (after deduction of processing fees).

The Central Seat Allocation Board has announced that about 16,000 students, including those who had rejected admissions in NITs, IIITs and other central institutions and those who couldn’t get seats in the special counselling round of CSAB, had applied for refund of the acceptance and commitment fee. The CSAB had held a special round of counselling after close to 3000 seats had fallen vacant in NITs at the end of the fourth round of JoSAA counselling.

CSAB sources informed that about 1.5 lakh students had filled in choices but about 1.48 lakh were those who had already participated and rejected seats allotted to them in the first four rounds. The final vacancy position in NITs, IIITs and other central institutions has not been published by the CSAB. However, in the 18 IITs and the ISM, only 32 seats were left vacant.