Colleges in Kharagpur

Aerospace will provide you with more opportunities abroad but ECE will give you loads of opportunities in India itself. Though the thing to consider here is that, IIT Kharagpur is an old IIT & much more established than any of the new IITs which will very much be visible during placements and in other avenues. Please decide accordingly.

It is just fake news that you have got and nothing else. Both the institutes are participating in JoSAA 2018, as usual.

No, you can't not even if you have internationally published and recognized projects. They want GATE. I don't know if it's an IIT thing or an MHRD thing but a person who spends most of his/her day doing really good projects has little time to prepare for exams like GATE and are usually not the type who sit idle and study for an exam for a year after finishing their degree.
So if you're bright, a hard worker, and doing good research/project work, in India you are out of luck.

The admissions are done on the basis of JEE Main rank so to get a rough idea about the college you can get through below link:
https://www.shiksha.com/b-tech/resources/jee-mains-college-predictor.

It's difficult but if you score really well in CAT and perform well in interview you can crack it.

I would rather suggest you to go for IIT first and do not lose your 1 year in B.Tech. If you don't have the option right now then you should study and prepare for the entrance exam of IIT then if pass then further procedure will start.

Here I am sharing the college predictor link. You can go through the link to get idea that which college you can get: https://www.shiksha.com/b-tech/resources/jee-mains-college-predictor.Good luck.