BITS, IIITB, IIITH and several other counselling are ongoing and will continue until July End/August, but JoSAA counselling for IITs closes by July 21st. What happens to all those seats in IITs that are left vacant by students joining other colleges? Isn’t it a waste of resources leaving all those seats vacant? Am I missing something? Can someone throw light?
The seats in IITs that are left vacant after the JoSAA counselling closes by July 21st generally remain vacant and are not filled later. Unlike NITs, IIITs, and GFTIs, which have a Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB) special counselling to fill vacant seats, IITs do not conduct any special or spot counselling rounds after JoSAA’s final round.
IITs are autonomous institutes and their seats are filled strictly through the JoSAA counselling rounds (there are typically six rounds). Once these rounds finish, any seat not accepted or joined by a candidate remains unfilled for that academic year. This means:
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Vacant IIT seats after JoSAA final round remain vacant for the entire academic year.
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There is no further opportunity or special counselling round to fill these IIT seats.
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Students arriving late or preferring other colleges over allocated IIT seats contribute to this vacancy.
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Around 40 to 50 seats may remain vacant across IITs annually.
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IITs emphasize that students had sufficient opportunity to update preferences and withdraw during the counselling process to prevent such situations.
The reasoning behind this is that IITs strictly adhere to the counselling conducted by JoSAA alone, unlike NITs/IIITs which have CSAB rounds to optimize seat utilization.
So yes, from a resource-utilization perspective, the IIT vacant seats can appear as a loss, but the system prioritizes a centralized counseling integrity and fairness rather than ad hoc seat filling after the official rounds.
If interested, the seats left vacant in NITs, IIITs, and GFTIs are handled differently via CSAB special rounds for maximum usage, but this does not cover IITs.