Colleges and universities in West Bengal will have a centralised online undergraduate admission process, possibly from this year, but some unitary universities like Jadavpur and Presidency are likely to be kept out of it and allowed to follow their own admission process, officials said.
A detailed notification will be issued later with separate admission processes for affiliating universities and unitary universities.
The announcements came after a meeting between vice-chancellors of state universities and education minister Bratya Basu.
St Xavier’s College and institutions run by Ramakrishna Mission, which conduct entrance examinations, will continue to have their own admission process, the officials said.
Minister Basu said the centralised online portal for admission to colleges and universities would be controlled by the higher education council.
The process, which he said the VCs have agreed to, will be ‘merit based and transparent’.
“We wanted to understand whether institutions are ready with the required infrastructure to have a centralised online admission from this year. Because of Covid there has been a lot of disruption and it is important to understand the ground reality…. We think we will be able to start this year,” Basu said after the meeting.
A student will be able to apply to multiple colleges by logging into a single portal instead of going to different admission portals of colleges.
Till now, a candidate applying for an undergraduate course would have to separately log into the websites or portals of various colleges for admission.
This system will also do away with the interference of students’ unions of respective colleges in the admission processes.
Students’ unions have been accused of promising seats for money, collecting money for help in the admission process and pressuring college authorities to admit students of their choice.
A VC who attended the meeting said an exception was made for unitary universities.
“Jadavpur University, Presidency University and some departments of Rabindra Bharati University will follow their own processes. But unitary universities like Diamond Harbour Womens’ University and Kanyashree University, which do not have the mechanism for an entrance test, will be part of the centralised portal,” the VC said.
According to sources present at the meeting, Presidency has been asked to inform the government about the process it will follow. The university used to conduct admission tests through the JEE board, which were stopped because of Covid.