Colleges to handle undergraduate admission after mop-up round

Kolkata: After completion of the mop-up round through the centralised admission portal, colleges will handle the undergraduate (UG) admission process independently to fill any remaining vacant seats in online, stand-alone mode, as announced by the West Bengal Higher Education department on Thursday.

For the first time this year, a centralised portal was launched for admission to undergraduate courses across 461 colleges. The first phase is complete and the ongoing second phase or the mop-up round will conclude on September 7. Despite that, many seats will remain vacant.

“To fill up the vacant seats (if any) in the higher education institutions, the competent authority of the state government decided that the admission process for the session 2024-25 after August 7 will be conducted by the individual institution in online, stand-alone mode,” stated the notification issued by the department. The announcement has led to several concerns among the principals of the colleges, primarily regarding the financial impact of setting a stand-alone admission portal. Indranil Kar, Principal of Surendranath College, expressed his worries, stating that principals are tense about the situation. He mentioned that a minimum of Rs 3 lakh would be needed to run a stand-alone portal and questioned whether the number of students taking admission would justify this expenditure.

Shiuli Sarkar, Principal of Lady Brabourne College, stated: “We got in touch with the service provider. However, now we cannot call this a fully centralised admission process.” Only about 400 out of 750 seats have been filled in the college through the portal so far.

“We have come back to square one and need to prepare again,” said Subhashish Dutta, Principal of Moulana Azad College. He also raised concerns about the source of funding for this new process. Some principals are quite upset with the decision of the department. “This is the result of a broken spine of higher education,” said Purna Chandra Maiti, President of All Bengal Principals’ Council. Some principals alleged that the decision to hand over the responsibility was known to the student unions beforehand.

The de-reservation of the reserved seats is another concern raised by the principals. As the department advised that the entire process of admission should be completed by September 30, 2024. Principals fear that de-reserving seats following the existing rules will be time consuming and may not yield enough students.

The department has outlined the modalities of the admission process for colleges, emphasising that admissions will be strictly merit-based, requiring no physical visits to the institutions at any stage. Document verification will occur when students report for classes. There will be no fee for admission form, scanning or uploading documents. Fees will be paid through e-payment or designated banks.