New Delhi: A total of 13,433 undergraduate seats are vacant at the University of Delhi even after three regular seat allocation rounds and two upgrade rounds, according to data made public Sunday.Last year, DU had around 9,000 vacant seats after all regular rounds.The university has now opened a spot admission round to fill the remaining seats through CUET scores till Aug 31. After the spot round, there may not be any further rounds through CUET, and colleges with vacant seats will be allowed to conduct admissions at their own level based on Class XII scores, dean of admissions Haneet Gandhi told TOI.The vacancy comes despite the initial overwhelming response to admissions, with more than 1.9 lakh students registering for 71,600 UG seats.The data shows that as of 1 pm Sunday, 2,113 seats were vacant in the general category, 4,133 among OBC-NCL candidates, 2,038 in the EWS category, 2,476 in SC, 1,791 in ST, 566 in the Sikh minority category and 316 in the Christian minority category.The vacancies are not restricted to off-campus colleges. Even prominent North Campus institutions, including St Stephen’s College, Hindu College, Hansraj College and Kirori Mal College, have empty seats. The vacancies are spread across BA (Hons), BSc (Hons) and BA programme courses. A substantial share of the vacant seats is in BA (Hons) courses in Sanskrit, Tamil and Bengali.This year, DU also introduced a parallel admission mechanism to deal with such vacancies. Under the arrangement, colleges with more than 50% of their seats vacant are allowed to admit students directly on the basis of Class XII scores, alongside the regular CUET-based admission.DU initially released a list of 11 such colleges on Aug 20, and four more were added the next day. The list was expanded further on Sunday and included prominent institutions such as Indraprastha College for Women and Gargi College. These colleges can admit students directly on the basis of Class XII results.The move is significant because DU normally conducts mop-up rounds after the spot round to fill seats that remain vacant. This year, however, colleges have been allowed to handle admissions parallelly at their own level through the Class XII route.“After Aug 31, there may not be a need to run another round as colleges will be able to fill the remaining eligible seats at their own level,” Haneet Gandhi said.
