Kolkata: The state higher education department on Tuesday permitted decentralised counselling—it could be online or offline—for BTech, pharmacy and architecture seats, which are still vacant, at govt institutes. The state allowed a one-time relaxation to conduct institute-level decentralised counselling to fill 21,000-odd seats and set a deadline to complete the process by Oct 31.State-run universities welcomed the move, hoping seats would now be filled up quickly and they could start first-semester undergraduate classes, which are already running behind time.For the first time, after three rounds of online counselling, the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (WBJEE) Board held even the counselling for the decentralised rounds online, on the decentralised counselling admission portal (DCAP) for undergraduate courses in engineering, technology, pharmacy and architecture. State higher education minister Jagannath Chattopadhyay recently posted that 27,599 seats were filled following e-counselling and online decentralised counseling, 11,870 more than that last year. But still, around 21,000 BTech seats out of the total count of 48,683 remain vacant.The official notice issued by the higher education department asked all the institutes to publish course-wise seat vacancy details, eligibility criteria, admission procedures and their schedule on respective websites and media platforms for prospective applicants. Additionally, institutes were to submit their vacancy notifications to both the higher education department and the WBJEE Board.After the permission for the offline-online decentralised admission process, institutes have been told to maintain complete records of total applications received, eligibility scrutiny, merit list generation, selection and admission to ensure transparency. Each will have to update the figures for vacant seats and final admissions on the designated state portal by Oct 31. The verification process has to be completed by Nov 2 with the department confirming that no extension beyond the Oct 31 deadline will be granted.Engineering institutes across the state welcomed the decision. Vice-chancellors of at least two state-run universities—Jadavpur University (JU) and Calcutta University (CU)—had written to the higher education department, requesting permission to conduct traditional offline decentralised counseling to fill vacant BTech seats. “We wrote to the govt long ago, requesting permission for decentralised spot counselling,” said JU VC Chiranjib Bhattacharjee. “Had we conducted the counselling ourselves, we could have started classes for all early. Now it’s Oct and classes will practically begin in Nov. It’s an inordinate delay. Classes have already started at the IITs and NITs and their first mid-semesters are over. Their second mid-semesters will probably be over soon, too, and they will appear for their end-semester exams in Nov. It’s creating a huge backlog. This is not at all desirable. Anyway, it’s good that permission has been granted.”Calcutta University vice-chancellor Asutosh Ghosh said: “I welcome this move. Every year, a few seats remain vacant after e-counselling, which are usually filled through a decentralised process. This time, too, the process will allow us to make a final attempt at filling those remaining seats.” An official at CU indicated that over 140 out of the 478 BTech seats remained vacant. Vacancies were in most departments other than the computer science and engineering, including electrical engineering and electronics engineering. At JU, around 140 of the total 1,190 BTech seats remain unfilled and the vacancies are across all departments except in computer science and electronics.
