A third of the first-year engineering seats in Jadavpur University are still vacant and the university will hold counselling on its own from December 14 to 17 to try and fill up the berths.
Over 400 BTech seats are lying vacant at an institute that was once considered most coveted.
JU has 12,53 BTech seats.
A JU official said that maximum seats are vacant in computer science and engineering and electronics and telecommunication engineering, the two disciplines that usually attract top rankers in entrance exams.
The vacancy figure emerged after the university decided to send a withdrawal form to all the enrolled students, seeking to know how many of them may finally decide to back out.
The option of withdrawal against getting a refund of the admission fee amounting Rs 5,000 started from December 3 and till Tuesday evening 360 students had backed out.
Since the university did not find any takers in 48 seats after the state JEE board conducted the centralised counselling for admission to the BTech programmes for all the institutes, the total vacancy figure now stands at 408.
Atal Chaudhuri, JU’s dean of engineering and technology, said: “By the time the option on withdrawal ends on December 8 the total vacancy count is expected to reach 450.”
As attendance was waning after the resumption of classes post Puja, the university launched the exercise to figure out how many students were likely to continue their engineering education in JU.
An official said since the seventh and final round of counselling for admission to the NITs by the joint seat selection authority (JOSAA) is expected to be completed by Wednesday, more vacancies will crop up. The body regulates seat allocation for the institutes like IITs, NITs.
In JU students who ranked within 61 and 180 respectively in the Bengal JEE, opted for the two most sought after disciplines — computer science and engineering and electronics and telecommunication engineering.
“Since most of the vacancy has occurred in these two disciplines, it is clear that the bright students of Bengal are opting for the IITs and NITs. While the inclination for switching to the IITs was prevalent, the preference for the NITs is posing a fresh challenge,” he said.
A teacher said hopes of better infrastructure and better placement opportunity at the NITs was luring students away from JU.
In the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) exercise carried out by the education ministry, JU had ranked 9th in the engineering category in 2017. Now, it has slipped to the 17th position.
A notice says that for participation in the decentralised counselling, all candidates including those already admitted in JU having valid state JEE ranks have to fill up an online registration form.
The link of the form will be available on https://admissionju.jadavpuruniversity.in/fetadmission on December 8 and will remain live till December 10.
