Mita Mukherjee

After a long-wait of over 10 years, the West Bengal government on Wednesday finally launched its centralized portal for admission of students in undergraduate courses.

The launching of the centralized online admission system after multiple setbacks not only brought relief to the government but also brought an end to anxiety of thousands of students who cleared the Class XII board exams this year and were waiting for admission for more than a month their results were announced— Bengal Higher Secondary on May 8, ISC on May 6 and CBSE Class XII on May 13.

In the new centralized portal system, an admission seeker can apply to multiple colleges by logging into a single portal.      

This is the first time admission to undergraduate courses offered in state-aided colleges and universities in Bengal will be held through a centralized online system.

Till last year, the undergraduate admission process in state-aided colleges and universities were held through a stand-alone mechanism in which colleges admitted students on their own, through an online system. In the stand-alone system an aspirant wanting to study a particular course was required to log into the websites of various colleges separately to apply.

Inaugurating the centralized portal, education minister Bratya Basu said that the important features of the new system is that it will ensure more transparency in the admission process, students will be able to upgrade their courses on availability of seats even after taking admission to a particular institution. The system will also enable colleges to prevent their seats from remaining vacant which happens to be a common problem faced by many colleges –mainly the middle rank ones for several years.

“Finally, we introduced the centralized admission portal. It took almost ten years to execute but better late than never. The new system will ensure transparency in the admission system. One of the unique features of the system is that a candidate will not have to log into various portals to choose a desired course. They can choose the course through a single window. A single candidate will be offered only one seat depending on her or his highest choice. This is another unique feature of the centralized admission,” Basu said after launching the portal.

Basu had first placed a proposal to the government to introduce a unified admission process during his first stint as education minister nearly 10 years ago. He again took the initiative to introduce centralized undergraduate admissions in 2021. The decision could not be implemented even in the following year as many colleges were not ready with the infrastructure facilities to start the system. The government was almost ready to implement it in 2023 but the decision was withdrawn at the last moment.

According to Basu, previously a single student would take admission in multiple colleges which deprived many deserving candidates from studying a course in a college of her or his choice. In the new system, there is no scope for blocking seats, the minister said.

The new system will allow the aspirants to apply to a maximum of 25 courses simultaneously. They can choose from 7,217 courses across 16 universities and 461 government-aided colleges.

However, Presidency University, Jadavpur University, Rabindra Bharati University, minority colleges, some autonomous colleges, B.Ed, law, fine arts and performing arts courses are not covered under the centralized admission process.

Institution-wise and course wise merit lists will be system generated and will be published on the same day, the minister said.

Aspiring candidates will be able to apply for the courses between June 24 and July 7. The first merit list will be released on July 12 and the admission process will end on July 18. First-year classes will begin on July 7 and second round mop up merit will be published on August 8.

Basu said the new system will also stop malpractices centering the admissions. The admissions will be held completely through an online process and students will not be required to visit the institutions till the completion of the admission process.

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