New Delhi: With an overall increase in the number of seats in IITs due to implementation of OBC quota, the number of aspirants for studying at the prestigious institutes has gone up by nearly two lakh this year.

A record number of nearly five lakh students, up from about three lakh last year, will appear in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) on 12 April. The test will have no change in the question pattern from last year.

“About five lakh students will appear in the test. This time the seats in the old IITs will be increased by 18% to implement quota for the OBCs,” Prof Gautam Baruah, director of IIT Guwahati, told PTI.

To implement the 27% OBC quota, the IITs are increasing their seats in a staggered manner over the period of three years from last year. They had increased the seats by 18% in 2008-09. There will be another 18% increase in 2009-10, while another 18% seats will be increased in 2010-11.

Besides this, six new IITs have started functioning from last year.

The government has also decided to make two more new IITs functional from this year. They are IIT-Madhya Pradesh and IIT-Himachal Pradesh. The two new IITs will offer 120 seats each.