An astounding number of first-year BTech seats are vacant in Jadavpur University, Bengal's premier government-run engineering institute, after centralised counselling.
The two coveted streams - computer science and engineering, and electronics and telecommunication - together account for 25 per cent of the 435 seats that are vacant across the 16 BTech disciplines at JU after the counselling conducted by the JEE board.
As many as 42 of the 65 seats in information technology don’t have any takers. Almost half the seats in electrical engineering - 49 out of 104 – are vacant.
Jadavpur University has 1,253 BTech seats.
The staggering numbers emerged after JU collated figures based on response to withdrawal forms that were sent to all enrolled first-year students.
In the form, JU sought to know how many of them may decide to discontinue, taking note of the fact that attendance was waning after the resumption of in-person classes post-Puja.
As many as 387 students have backed out after enrolling at JU and 48 did not take admission.
The university had earlier decided to hold independent counselling from December 14 to 17 to fill up the vacant seats. Now, it has been decided to hold the exercise for an additional day because of the large number of vacant seats, said Atal Chaudhuri, dean of engineering and technology, who is also a professor in the department of computer science and engineering.
“The duration of the counselling has been increased by one day (December 22) because of the rise in the number of vacant seats,” Chaudhuri told The Telegraph.
The option to respond through the withdrawal form over digital platforms was available from December 3 to 8.
The enrolled students can also in-person inform the office of faculty council of engineering and technology about withdrawal till the start of independent counselling, which means the number of vacant seats could go up further.
A JU teacher said even the domicile policy introduced in 2019, which mandates reservation of 90 per cent of the engineering seats in JU in the general category for students who have passed their Plus-II board exams from Bengal, is not being able to stop the exodus of bright students.
In JU students who ranked within 61 and 180 in the Bengal JEE opted for computer science and engineering and electronics and telecommunication engineering, respectively.
“Bright students are going to places that they deem better. Even the NITs are now outranking JU. This is an area of concern,” said a teacher of computer science and engineering. When JU had started the decentralised counselling in 2014, the exercise was held for only 147 seats.
The decentralised — or independent — counselling will start on December 14 at 11am in Gandhi Bhavan, on JU’s main campus.