New Delhi, Aug 3 (IANS): For the time, all seats of the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology have been filled, the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry has said.

HRD Secretary R. Subrahmanyam said all the 13,604 seats of the undergraduate courses in all the IITs have been filled with proactive cooperation of all IITs and coordination by IIT Roorkee.

"13,604 undergraduate admissions in IITs this year with NIL vacant seats -- a great step for us in MHRD achieved with proactive cooperation of all IITs and coordination by IIT Roorkee," tweeted the HRD Secretary.

Officials said the admission to the seats in 23 IITs is in excess as per the data released by the HRD ministry. This means that roughly 620 seats earmarked for the weaker sections have also been filled. This is the first year that the EWS quota has been introduced.

Last year, 118 seats in the IITs had found no takers. There were 110 vacant seats in 2017, 96 in 2016, 32 in 2015, three in 2014 and 149 seats in 2013.

The official said the ministry had constituted a committee to recommend suitable measures to fill the vacant seats. The official added that the committee was constituted to minimise vacancies in Centrally-funded technical institutions including IITs and NITs.