Changes to engineering admission process on anvil

Bhubaneswar :  As a part of reforms in the process of admission into engineering courses to address the problem of seat vacancies in colleges, the Odisha government is discussing a proposal through which part admission fee of Rs 30,000 paid by students will now be deposited with Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) Committee rather than the concerned colleges. The deposited fees will remain with the OJEE authorities till the completion of the 3rd phase of admissions.

As per the existing process, the fee was being deposited by the students in the colleges of their choice after the first phase of admission.

Sources informed that the students will continue to have the option to change colleges during the 3 phases of the admission process and will be refunded their part admission fee once they withdraw from the admission process.

From now on, admissions into to colleges will be done on the basis of rank upgradation. Moreover, the final admission list will only be published after the conclusion of all the three phases of counselling.

The decision in this regard was taken at a meeting chaired by the development commissioner to tackle seat vacancies in government engineering colleges.

“We are observing that a lot of seats are falling vacant and we are taking steps to ensure that the seats are filled up. We are taking cues from other States and trying to see how we can improve our own admission process,” said Commissioner-cum-Secretary of Skill Development and Technical Education department, Sanjay Singh.

“Wherever there are vacant seats, students will be upgraded based upon their ranks and they can get into government seats. This is the government’s objective and we are working in that particular area. With the proposed changes, we are trying to address the issue of seat vacancy in government colleges despite 100% allotment in JEE. We are planning a provision through which rank holders can be upgraded to government colleges in case there is a vacancy,” said OJEE Chairman, Tushar Kumar Nath.

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