The state government has allowed engineering colleges to conduct counselling and select students for admission on their own as 60 per cent of the BTech seats have remained vacant following a three-phased centralised counselling.

As many as 20,000 out of 34,000-odd engineering seats are vacant after admission through centralised counselling. Last year, around 12,900 of the 33,000-odd seats were vacant.

An order issued by the higher education department on Tuesday said the institutions were being asked to start the de-centralised counselling as “a reasonable number of seats in such professional technical courses are lying vacant”.

Vacant seats have been a problem with some of Bengal’s engineering institutions year after year. But unlike other years, seats are vacant in large numbers this time even in premier institutions like Jadavpur University and Calcutta University.

Though the order does not specify any schedule, an official said each institution had been asked to start the counselling from this week.

Out of 1,253 BTech seats at Jadavpur University, 450 are vacant, said a university official. After the centralised counseling, JU’s vacancy figure had stood at 260 last year.

Eighty-five out of the 237 BTech seats at Calcutta University, which is considered next to JU, did not find any takers. CU’s vacancy figure last year had been 50.

The Telegraph had on November 5 reported about the large number of vacant seats in the engineering institutions even after the JEE board had carried out a three-phased counseling, which started on August 12 and ended on October 31.

The staggering vacancy at Jadavpur University, where the cost of studying is bare minimum, has left officials of the higher education department baffled.

“It is understandable that the students are not willing to pay the steep tuition fee at private engineering colleges for studying BTech, given the shrinking job prospect amid the pandemic. But we fail to understand why students avoided JU in such large numbers,” said an official.

An official of the engineering and technology faculty at JU said that even as the university had been filling seats in the first round of centralised counseling, enrolled students started backing out after counseling for the NITs began in mid-October.

“As the Joint Seat Allocation Authority started its counseling, a large number of students who had opted for JU backed out and took admission in NITs. This led to a situation where one in the three seats has remained vacant at JU,” said the official.

Another official said that such an exodus for the NITs, where the cost of studying is way too high compared with JU, goes to show that JU is gradually conceding its space to the NITs.

“This was not the situation even a few years ago. NITs, with better infrastructure, are snatching bright students from JU. Through decentralised counseling, we will get students who are lower down the rank,” he said.

Chiranjib Bhattacharjee, a pro-vice-chancellor at JU, declined comment when contacted. He had in June asked JU teachers in the engineering faculty to find out why the university’s position in the engineering category in the NIRF ranking had been sliding continuously over the past four years.