The higher education department on Wednesday issued a revised order that said it had only taken “preparatory steps” for the use of a centralised online admission portal for undergraduate general degree courses.
This order does not mention when the new admission mechanism will be rolled out.
The department had on Tuesday evening issued an order saying it had decided to “use” the centralised online admission portal for the undergraduate general degree courses in West Bengal from the “2023-24 academic year” in all government and government-aided colleges, unitary universities and state-aided affiliating universities.
The revised order says the earlier order stands “cancelled”.
In the latest order, the department has asked the state-aided universities to send by March 2 the undergraduate admission rules approved by the respective institutions.
The department after going through the rules will decide when the centralised online portal for undergraduate admission will be introduced, said an official of the department. “So the revised order does not mention the year of roll-out,” the official said.
Last year, too, the department had stopped short of rolling out the centralised online admission process despite education minister Bratya Basu’s announcement in May that the system would be introduced.
Under the system that is being contemplated, students will submit their marks in the portal and apply through it for admission to as many colleges as they want. The portal will prepare a merit list and allot a college to each student.
Till now, a candidate applying for an undergraduate course was required to separately log into the websites or portals of the colleges of his or her choice.
An official in the higher education department said each college affiliated to a state-aided university has its own cut-off marks in each subject for admission. Once the centralised portal is introduced, there has to be a common subject-wise cut-off across the colleges.
“Now, the subject cut-off for mathematics honours in Asutosh College is different from that of, say, Bangabasi College,” the official said.
A common cut-off in each subject across the 140-odd colleges affiliated to Calcutta University has to be fixed before the new admission system rolls out, he said.
A similar exercise has to be undertaken for the colleges affiliated to West Bengal State University, Burdwan University and North Bengal University, among other affiliating institutions.
Once that is done at the university level, a merit list will be prepared based on a candidate’s performance at the Plus-II level and a college will be allotted to him or her.
“This is a huge exercise. Each affiliating university has to step forward to fix the standardised cut-off for departments across humanities, science and commerce faculty.... It won’t be judicious to specify a particular academic year for the introduction of the centralised online admission system,” said another official of the department.
The rollout of the centralised online admission portal has been pending for a few years.
In 2014, during Basu’s previous stint as education minister, such a system could not be introduced following protests from the Trinamul Congress students’ wing.
“We are in-principle agreed to the launch of this centralised admission mechanism. But there are some practical challenges which we have to sort out,” said an official of the department.