Delhi University on Tuesday announced that there would be no change in the admission process, despite thousands of undergraduate (UG) seats remaining vacant in the university allegedly because of the opaque admission system.

DU has launched the UG admission portal Common Seat Allocation System (CSAS) for admission to approximately 71,000 seats in UG regular courses across 69 colleges.

The colleges under DU admitted students based on Class XII scores till 2021. The university switched to Common University Entrance Test (CUET)-based admission in 2022. It started the CSAS portal to enable students to apply centrally for multiple institutions and courses.

In 2022 and 2023, nearly 5,000 and 7,000 seats remained vacant, respectively. Some faculty members have attributed the vacancies to a “flawed and opaque” CSAS-based admission system.

Under the marks-based admission system, the colleges used to set their own cut-offs for each subject. So, the students could exercise choice. After taking admission to a course, they could still change the course and even the college if seats for their preferred course were available.

Under the present CSAS system, neither the student nor the college knows the cut-off for any course. Now each student has to mention a hierarchy of subject-cum-college preferences right at the outset, and the system then allots a particular course at a particular college based on her CUET score and preferences. If the student wants to change his or her preferences during subsequent rounds of the online CSAS, he or she can only go for higher options.

For example, a student’s preferences in descending order are economics hons, political science hons, history hons, home science hons and BA (non-hons). Now if she is allotted history and she wants to change her preference, she can only choose economics or political science — if seats are available in those subjects — but not home science or BA (non-hons) even if her marks are good enough to secure admission to these courses.

DU registrar Vikas Gupta said that the same admission process would continue this year too.

“It is not possible to allow the students to repeat all their preferences when they go for an upgrade. Then the system will be difficult,” Gupta said.

To avoid vacancy of seats, the university admits more students beyond the available seats. Gupta said 20 per cent extra general and Other Backward Classes (OBC) students were admitted last year and 30 per cent extra students were admitted in Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories. The extra admission policy will continue this year too.

In addition to this, mop-up rounds were allowed to colleges where more than 10 per cent of seats remained vacant, he said. He said the vacant seats were mostly in the colleges away from the north campus because of a lack of demand. Gupta ruled out the allegation of opacity in the CSAS process.

“The system rightly selects the students on merit,” Gupta said.

Rajdhani College faculty Rajesh Jha said the university was in denial mode about the problem.

“DU colleges were giving admission beyond their capacity until the CSAS was introduced. Now there is some problem. The least the university is expected to do is to admit the problem and discuss it with faculty members,” he said.