Seats lie vacant in many South Kolkata colleges

Kolkata: A number of colleges in South Kolkata have vacancies in a reasonable number of seats and most college principals believe that this downward trend in admission is primarily because students are preferring institutions closer to their residences amid the COVID-19 situation.

Asutosh College in South Kolkata that has already published its 8th merit list has filled up only 1,800 of its total 6,000 seats in Honours as well as in Pass category. "The admission trend is somewhat low in comparison to the previous years and some of the major subjects in Honours for both BA and BSc have vacancies. Sanskrit and Philosophy in Arts and Electronics in Science have a few takers. Students are preferring institutions closer to their residences amidst the Covid pandemic situation," said Apurba Ray, Vice-Principal of Asutosh College.

The college has opened up its admission portal for the second time with the Calcutta University granting colleges to do so till Oct 31.

Basanti Devi College at Gariahat in south Kolkata has 50 percent vacancy with 500 of its 1,000 seats getting filled up. "Admission has been extremely poor in BA pass course with 167 seats remaining vacant. Even in Honours there are vacancies in a number of subjects both in

Science and Arts," said college Principal Indrila Guha.

As many as 50 seats in Communicative English (Hons), 42 in Philosophy (Hons), 45 in Sanskrit (Hons), 36 in Economics (Hons), 29 in Mathematics (Hons), and 21 in Bengali (Hons) are lying vacant in the college.

"We have opened the admission window for the second time a week back and till date have received 100 fresh applications which is encouraging," added Guha.

Vivekananda College in Thakurpukur has a slightly better picture but is struggling to fill up seats allocated for the reserved category students. Out of a total of 2020 seats in the college

1,500 seats have already been filled up in the first phase of admission that continued till September 25.

In case of Arts subjects Sanskrit and Philosophy has had few takers and in case of Electronics (Hons) in Science there are significant vacancies. "We have opened up the admission portal for the second time and it will continue till October 10. We are hopeful that the existing vacancies will be filled up," said Tapan Kumar Poddar, Principal of the college.

He added that majority of the 6 per cent reserved seats are lying vacant. "The problem of filling up of the reserved seats was witnessed in the previous year too," he maintained.

There are some other colleges like Maulana Azad College, Lady Brabourne College that are still emphasising on calling up students from the merit list.

They are looking at the completion of UG admission at Jadavpur University which is scheduled on October 10 before opening up the admission window for the second time.