The first batch of five students admitted under the sports excellence admission category at IIT-Madras.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Five nationally accomplished sportspersons have been admitted to the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) under the ‘Sports Excellence Admission’ category for the academic year 2024-25.

The institute has allocated two supernumerary seats in each of its undergraduate programmes for Indian citizens, one of which is exclusively for women. It is the first among the IITs to offer such a facility.

Institute director V. Kamakoti said the aim of the initiative is to underscore the need to encourage children to play.

The athletes are Arohi Bhave (volley ball) from Maharashtra, admitted to BS Medical Science and Engineering; Aryaman Mandal (water polo) from West Bengal, admitted to B.Tech (Computer Science and Engineering); Nandini Jain (squash) from Delhi, admitted to B.Tech (CSE); Prabhav Gupta (table tennis) from Delhi, admitted to B.Tech (AI and Data Science); and Vaangala Vedavachan Reddy (lawn tennis) from Andhra Pradesh, admitted to B.Tech (AI and DS).

Mahesh Panchagnula, Head of Centre of Excellence in Sports Science and Analytics and Dean of students, said the first cohort of students under the new category were admitted in July this year.

There were several applications; students who had passed JEE (Advanced) were selected, he said.

The admission for the category is not through joint seat allocation authority (JoSSA), but through a separate portal operated by the institute.