– Mita Mukherjee

More than 10 percent BTech seats at Jadavpur University – one of Bengal’s most prestigious state-aided engineering institutions – remain vacant after the centralised counselling conducted by the state Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Board.

Teachers of the engineering faculty of the institution said the university had noticed a decline in the number of admission seekers in the engineering departments even before. But what is alarming this year is that seats of some most sought-after departments have been filled up by candidates who have secured much lower ranks in JEE this time compared to last year, a trend that indicates that meritorious students who secured top ranks in state JEE have gone to IITs, NITs and institutes in other state despite getting an opportunity to study the courses at Jadavpur University.

BTech courses in the university’s electrical engineering and electronics and computer science and engineering are most in demand among students in the country.

A source in the admission department of the institution said the number of vacant seats in computer science and engineering is two after the end of the centralised counselling. But the opening rank in the most sought- after stream has gone down from 15 in 2024 to 49 this year.

A drop in opening rank has been noticed also in the electrical engineering department. The opening rank in electrical engineering was within 200 last year which has dropped to 384 this year.

In electronics the opening rank is 80 which is same as last year but the next student admitted to this course has secured a rank above 240. This gap was not there last year.

In all, there are around 1300 BTech seats of which around 150 remain vacant this year. Like previous years, the state higher education department has asked state-funded engineering institutions to fill the unclaimed seats through decentralised independent counselling.

However, according to teachers, decentralised counselling will reduce the number of vacant seats. But only those with much lower ranks are most likely to take the seats. Some teachers said the university failed to attract top JEE rank holders this year because of the delayed start of the admission process.

The Bengal JEE was conducted on April 27. But the centralised counselling started three months later in August after the Supreme Court stayed a Calcutta High Court order barring implementing the state government’s notification on granting OBC reservation to 140 sub-categories.

The dean of engineering and technology, Parthapratim Biswas said seats remaining vacant is an old trend. What is concerning is the downward change in the opening and closing ranks.

“Seats remaining vacant is not a new feature. This has happened even before. What is concerning is the lowering of the opening ang closing ranks. This means meritorious students who wanted to pursue our BTech courses decided to study the courses at other institutions outside Bengal. They chose not to come back and take the seats at JU because the courses have already started there. This is a loss for our university. These good students have not come back because of the long delay in starting the admission process here,” Biswas told EducationWorld.

The university is likely to start decentralised counselling in the second week of October.

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