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Sat, Jul 3 12:55 PM

New Delhi, July 3 -- Just as the IIMs had to cope with glitches in their online entrance process, the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) are also drawing flak for the online admissions introduced this year. Complaints about the new online counselling process being unsafe were echoed by several IIT faculty members, who told HT the new system was not only non-secured but also prone to misuse.

The controversy has its origins in the online counselling system that has replaced physical counselling sessions that were in practice till last year. IIT freshers choose their stream and the institute where they want to study during the counselling process.

All eligible IIT students now have to do is to feed their registration number and name on the website to select a course and the institution where they would prefer to study. The website doesn't ask for a password, and once the choices have been made, the software doesn't allow any alteration.

"A student's registration number is not secret and can be known to several others, including competing students," a computer science professor said. "Rivals can pick a course for any given student in a manner that suits them," he said.

A senior IIT administrator, on the condition of anonymity, admitted "the online system may not be tamper-proof but no evidence has come up to suggest there has been a misuse". Several IIT teachers - who cannot officially speak to the media under service rules - argued the "non-secure" nature of the online counselling website makes the process open to misuse. Online counselling also offers less transparency than face-to-face sessions, some students say.

The first round of the counselling is over but the IITs will host a second round to enable students to pick up any vacant seats that were available only to higher ranked students in the first round.

All general category students who earned a rank in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) this year were asked to visit jee.iitm.ac.in/allotcourses to pick their stream and the institution where they want to study.