We earlier reported that several faculty posts in IITs may remain vacant due to the government-imposed reservations. Considering all IITs are woefully short-staffed on faculty, this is a welcome move!

IITs free to dereserve vacant faculty posts: Govt-India-The Times of India

NEW DELHI: In a big shift from its earlier stand, the HRD ministry has accepted the demand of IITs that reservations in faculty should not extend to lecturers. It has also agreed that caste quotas should be implemented across all streams.

Everyone has a favorite amongst Facebook, Myspace, Orkut and Hi5. We had to pick one: Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It Is Also The Fastest Growing

ITBHU/IITv alumni also happen to be amongst the fastest adapters of Facebook for comparative groups: our three-weeks old Facebook IITv group has over 200 members, whereas the largest Pan-IIT Facebook group is yet to cross the 600 mark.

Please join and share your ideas to enrich the social networking exprience for all!

Call it the Facebook World Tour. Even though Facebook is now the largest social network in the world,—with 132 million unique visitors in June—it is also still the fastest growing. (At least among the major social networks).

Quotas in the selection of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) faculty are unlikely to be implemented this academic year as these premier tech-schools want the government to reconsider the controversial proposal. All the 13 IITs, including the six new ones, have requested the human resource development (HRD) ministry for a “second thought� about implementing quotas for marginalised sections of society in the faculties.

In June, we alerted all alumni that an Impostor Website has sprung up based entirely on ITBHU.org-copyrighted content and alumni data. We have now corroborated evidence beyond doubt that the data was stolen by a former ITBHU.org website volunteer Animesh Pathak CSE03, who now owns and operates the impostor site.

We hereby appeal to you all owners of ITBHU.org, the registered alumni, to ascertain the facts stated below for yourself. We urge to reject the agenda of the copycat impostor website that is founded on country-club principles, that continues to operate on stolen data, and that is using stolen data to drive traffic for cheap online ads!

Even without going through the facts listed below, with one look you can easily verify itbhuglobal is an impostor site: its domain itbhuglobal.org was created in mid-07 but most its pages were created in 2006 and prior(!); those pages are an exact copy of the ITBHU.org-copyrighted and hosted content with a veneer of a new stylesheet and colors. The impostor website also operates using the entire 2007 ITBHU.org registration database that Animesh Pathak copied in January 2007, perhaps again later, before his server access was withdrawn.

We took the extraordinary step of posting these violations publicly only after private efforts to stop Animesh from continuing with this illegal step failed, while the alumni community continued to be riven asunder.

Predictably, our alert triggered a vilifying campaign from the half-dozen alumni who are complicit with Animesh Pathak. One such from a Vasudevan Raghavan threatens an ITBHU.org volunteer who questioned the data theft: "you may find yourself without any friends from the BHU-IT circle.". So there! BHU-style raw politics is now in our own midst, threatening ITBHU alumni efforts which you all have contributed to growing from-strength-to-strength since 2002.

We need your help to counter this vilifying campaign. We need you to speak up and foil hijacking of our common goods by BHU-style politicians. Together, we can turn the tide against the impostors. We have notified all registered alumni that we are using the IITv Yahoo! Social Group to collectively formulate our action plan.

While our impostor alert is unambiguous on the data theft and copyright violation acts, the flurry of threatening emails and the vilifying campaign by the impostors on yahoo groups has not presented a single rebuttal of the serious data-theft and copyright violation. You will know why when you read below

ITBHU.org bylaws vest ownership of all alumni data and content on this website to you, the registered alumni. Therefore, it is the obligation of us volunteers to present to you all, the owners and legal members of this organization, a true picture of the events that have led to this situation:


1. ITBHU.org was founded in 2002. It incorporated in 2003 (search for "itbhu") as a California nonprofit corporation.


2. Founding of ITBHU.org was a lightening rod all alumni had waited for years. The organization grew from strength to strength. Thousands of you registered online. Scores volunteered and lifted the efforts to create a viable organization. During the period, the organization was too nascent to formulate bylaws, so the founder invited a broad set of volunteers and nominated some to the board of directors. Absent bylaws that define the process to appoint, elect or the resignation by directors, all nominated directors continued.


3. In 2006, United States and California tax authorities required ITBHU.org to submit our formal bylaws by year-end in order to complete the tax-exemption under US tax code section 501(c)(3).


4. This prompted a section of the nominated directors to push hard for bylaws that would convert ITBHU.org literally into a country club. A type of country club where the organization's legal membership would be restricted exclusively to the then-directors who would from-time-to-time nominate and disqualify members from amongst big donors and alumni who remain members at the pleasure of the majority of directors. These same members would then be the only eligible voters for the election to the board of directors! These bylaws sought to form a literal country-club by relegating almost all 5000+ registered alumni to a second-class status, ineligible to be members or directors.
   
5. Thankfully, the founder and key members rejected the country-club draft. The above link lists proponents of the country-club bylaws, who predictably have now resurfaced as career-volunteers behind the impostor website.
   
6. In December 2006, after rejecting the country-club draft, ITBHU.org adopted bylaws for a true, democratic organization that gives inalienable membership, director and election rights to all registered alumni.
   
7. However, adoption of democratic bylaws curtailed the powers of the country-club proponents including Animesh Pathak. Stung with the rebuff, Animesh Pathak abused alumni trust of access to the website content and registration data, broke law and copied it all to his home computer before his access was taken away.
   
8. Six months later the data that Animesh Pathak stole appeared under itbhuglobal.org, which clearly shows mid-07 creation date.
   
9. In the meanwhile, ITBHU.org continued to grow with more than 1000 alumni registering in the past year. As of this posting, we are at the 6300 mark.
   
10. The July 2008 ITBHU.org appeal to all alumni received a very enthusiastic response. We have just crossed the 1000 mark on LinkedIn and Facebook for alumni registration with the IITv.org (alias to ITBHU.org) Social Groups. This is an active but largely silent majority that is busy with success in their respective fields with little time to deal with the machinations of the career-volunteers at itbhuglobal.
    

We have seen it all at BHU, haven't we? We all have succeeded in kicking the BHU administration out of IT affairs! We have succeeded in becoming an IIT!! So now we have to fight keep these career-volunteers of our alumni property!!!

We hereby appeal to you all owners of ITBHU.org, the registered alumni, to reject the agenda of the copycat impostor website that is founded on country-club principles, that continues to operate on stolen data, and that is using stolen data to drive traffic for cheap online ads!

IIT-Madras director M S Ananth calls it ‘‘criminal’’ to
take in students with cutoffs that are further relaxed. ‘‘These
students will suffer and so will their self-confidence,’’ he told TOI.

IITs to lower cut-offs, fill seats

MUMBAI: In the history of IITs, there has never been a second round of admissions. This year, though, vacant seats at all 13 IIT campuses, as also at IT-BHU and Indian School of Mines-Dhanbad, will be filled after a second list is soon put out.

A delightful academic development: IIT-B is evolving beyond the rigid norm for students to obtain only a single one-branch degree at a time, i.e. what they call a major in the US, and will now allow students to choose an additional expertise, a minor, from 17 options including management.

Get both engineering & management degrees from IIT-B-Mumbai-Cities-The Times of India

The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay has now decided to allow engineering aspirants to pursue management alongside. It's the first IIT to make such a change.

About 41% of the class of 2006 graduates from IIT-B took up managerial jobs, namely in finance and consultancy.

Patna IIT to start from August 6- Education-Careers-Indiatimes - Infotech

PATNA: It's official now. Bihar's dream of setting up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is set to become a reality on Aug 6. Classes will begin from the next day.