GATE 2027 in Vijayawada: IIT Kharagpur Zone, Back-up Cities and Institutes

Most of us think of Vijayawada, Guntur and Amaravati as one area. The GATE 2027 exam-city list does not. It splits Andhra Pradesh across three zones:

Zone (coordinating institute)	Andhra Pradesh exam cities
IIT Kharagpur	Bhimavaram, Eluru, Kakinada-Surampalem, Rajamahendravaram (Rajahmundry), Srikakulam, Tadepalligudem, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram
IIT Madras	Amaravati, Chirala-Bapatla, Chittoor, Guntur, Kadapa, Nandyala, Nellore, Ongole, Tirupati
IISc	Anantapur, Kurnool

The rule on the form is simple and strict. You pick six cities, and all six must be from the same zone. So the moment you put Vijayawada down, Guntur and Amaravati are off the table, along with everything south of them on the IIT Madras list.

Vijayawada appears as one city. The form has no east or west Vijayawada option, and you cannot ask for a particular area. GATE assigns the centre inside the city.

Keep in mind that the list is tentative. GATE says it may add or drop cities and may allot a city outside your choices if it has to. The exam is held only in India.

If you are staying in Vijayawada in February, this is the zone to use. Your other five choices all come from the IIT Kharagpur column above, plus Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal, which are too far to be practical for most of us. A workable order:

1. Vijayawada
2. Eluru
3. Tadepalligudem
4. Bhimavaram
5. Rajamahendravaram (Rajahmundry)
6. Kakinada-Surampalem or Visakhapatnam

Swap the last two around depending on where you have a relative or a friend's room for the night. A back-up city is only useful if you can actually reach it and sleep there. If you have family in Visakhapatnam, move it up; our Visakhapatnam page covers that city in the same zone.

If you call yourself a Vijayawada student but actually study or live on the Guntur side, the IIT Madras zone may be the better bet, and then Vijayawada drops out instead. An all-IIT Madras zone list could be Guntur, Amaravati, Chirala-Bapatla, Ongole, Nellore and Tirupati.

The Telangana cities closest to us are also IIT Madras zone: Khammam, Kodad and Kothagudem. They can go on that same list, but they can never sit next to Vijayawada.

Two more combinations that do not work:

• Hyderabad and Nalgonda: both are IISc zone, so a Vijayawada student who plans to be in a Hyderabad job or hostel has to choose between the two cities rather than list both. See the Hyderabad page for that zone.
• Kurnool and Anantapur: also IISc zone.

Decide where you will physically be on the exam weekends, then pick the zone that covers that place. Do it once, and do not try to hedge across zones, because the form will not let you.

IIT Madras organises GATE 2027, but exam-city queries for Vijayawada go to the IIT Kharagpur zone. As listed on the official page:

IIT Kharagpur, Kharagpur – 721 302
Email: gateonline@adm.iitkgp.ac.in
Phone: 03222-282091, 03222-282095

If you went with the IIT Madras zone list instead, your zone office is IIT Madras: helpdesk@gate.iitm.ac.in, 044-22578200. Write from your registered email and include your enrolment ID either way.

The official dates page shows the application data correction window as TBA. Watch for it if you want to change your city order.

GATE 2027 runs on three weekends: 6 and 7 February, 13 and 14 February, and 20 and 21 February 2027. The city allotment notification is due on 4 January 2027. That tells you which of your six cities you got. The admit card, date still TBA, gives the exact centre and reporting time.

A few things worth doing once the admit card is out:

• Look up the centre the same day. A centre can be on the edge of a city, and you may not know the place even if you know the city.
• If you were allotted Eluru, Rajamahendravaram or any back-up, plan to reach the evening before rather than travel on the morning of a forenoon session.
• Print the admit card and carry the original photo ID you entered in the application, plus anything else the admit card asks for. Its instructions on what you can take inside are final.

Results are due on 19 March 2027.

The GATEiit institute pages nearest to us are these. Each explains how that institute admits GATE DA and GATE CSE candidates:

• IIT Tirupati, in Tirupati, the IIT in our own state
• NIT Warangal, in Warangal, Telangana
• IIT Hyderabad and IIIT Hyderabad
• IIT Madras, further south in Chennai

The complete set is on /institutes. One point that confuses people every year: your exam city has nothing to do with admission. Writing in the Kharagpur zone does not tie you to IIT Kharagpur, and writing in Tirupati does not help with IIT Tirupati. Choose the city for the exam day and the institutes on your score.

GATEiit is an online site with no centre in Vijayawada or anywhere else, and the material is free. Start on the page for your paper: GATE DA (Data Science and Artificial Intelligence) or GATE CSE (Computer Science and Information Technology). Each lists the syllabus and links the WhatsApp group for that paper. DA with CS is an allowed two-paper combination in 2027, if you want to write both.

Then work on past papers on /pyq and topic-wise sets on /practice. The GATE DA 2027 guide and the GATE CSE 2027 guide set out a plan, and the rest of the guides fill in the details. Since every exam day is a Saturday or Sunday, take your full mocks on weekends too. For all cities, see the exam-city overview.