The Indian Institute of Technology Madras will introduce sports quota seats in its undergraduate programmes from the next academic year. The institute said two supernumerary seats per UG programme and at least half of the seats will be for women students. IIT Madras is the first among the IITs to introduce separate quota for sportspersons.
The first of such initiatives among the IITs in the country, the ‘Sports excellence admission’ (SEA) is open to Indian nationals only.
Candidates must have qualified in Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) but the admission would not be through Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSSA) portal. The institute will operate a separate portal. More details are available at https://jeeadv.iitm.ac.in/sea
Institute director V. Kamakoti said the step ensured holistic education as envisaged in the National Education Policy 2020. Not only would the step acknowledge achievements in sports of youngsters but also give them an opportunity to further understand their respective sports from an engineering and technology perspective. “IIT Madras has added many sports-related electives and is also having many state-of-the art facilities.”
Mr. Kamakoti said the institute proposed to launch a sports complex with advanced equipment “in the near future”.
To be eligible for admission under SEA, candidates must have secured a position in the common rank list or in the category-wise rank list in JEE (Advanced) and must have won at least one medal in any national/international-level sports competition in the last four years.
The institute will prepare a separate sports rank list and seat allotment will be based on the total score the candidates have obtained in their performance in a specific list of sports.