The joint entrance examination board has turned down an appeal by private engineering colleges to reopen filling in of online application forms for the entrance test.

The number of applicants for the 2020 exam has dropped sharply and private colleges fear they will have more seats vacant if the number of applicants is fewer.

But the JEE board thinks that they should focus more on candidates who are really interested in pursuing engineering instead of trying to shore up the number of applicants.

The online form fill-up had ended on November 13 and the number of applicants in the next year’s examination has come down to 89,000 from 1,13,912 this year, registering a drop of 24,000. Metro had reported the decline in numbers on November 27.

The examination is due on February 22. In 2020, the JEE board has brought forward the tests by two months to February in an attempt to ensure colleges have more time to fill their vacant seats.

But the sharp fall in the number of applicants has spawned a fear among members of the Association of Professional Academic Institutions that they could be staring at more vacant seats next year.

“We had gone to the board’s office on Thursday with the appeal that the JEE board should announce a fresh deadline of seven to ten days, so that more candidates could apply. We are fearing that the seats could remain vacant. The board has struck down the appeal citing some technical issues,” said Taranjit Singh, the president of the association.

Dibyendu Kar, the board’s registrar, said: “We have convinced the association that there was no need to give a fresh schedule for filling in forms.”

In 2019, the numbers of the applicants had declined by 12,000 as compared to 2018.

The marginal decline that had started from 2018 has reached its peak in the next two years.

Academics have attributed the waning interest in engineering courses triggered by shrinking job prospects.

More than two-thirds of the 33,000-odd engineering seats in Bengal had remained empty this year following the completion of centralised counselling of the JEE board in August.

A JEE board official said the college representatives are only interested to swell the number of applicants as they want to somehow fill up the seats that would remain vacant post the completion of centralised counselling by carrying out counselling on their own.

The higher education department allows the colleges to hold counselling on their own after the centralised counselling gets over.

“They want to have a pool of candidates who will be somehow convinced into taking admission so that the colleges could run their business. What if the students do not get jobs after passing out from these middle-rung colleges. We are keen on having candidates those who have taken an informed decision to pursue engineering,” said the official.

In engineering, a good number of students who take admission through the centralised counselling quit once the NITs and IITs start admission. Some take admission to MBBS programmes.

“We are fearing that once this exodus takes place we won’t have enough candidates even for the decentralised counselling,” said an owner of the self-financed college.