Jadavpur University will conduct independent counselling from September 24 to 27 to fill 150 of its 1,253 BTech seats that have remained vacant after the centralised counselling, which was conducted by the state JEE board.

As for general category candidates, an information brochure issued by JU says that those with a WBJEE-2923 GMR (general merit rank) within 10,000 can participate in the counselling.

The higher education department issued a notice on Thursday, allowing colleges and universities offering four-year BTech courses to admit students through independent counselling so that the 13,000 out of 35,000 BTech seats that remained vacant after the end of the centralised counselling, could be filled up.

The eligibility criteria mentioned in the information brochure says: "Candidates must have a valid WBJEE-2024 GMR within 10,000 for the general category....The vacancy matrix is dynamic and vacancies for a particular course under a particular category may increase during the counselling process due to a change of course for students already admitted to JU, if any".

Usually, students with a general merit rank within 4,000 participate in the centralised counselling for the 1,253 seats across 16 disciplines.

"Since some of the enrolled students have left, students with a general merit rank within 10,000 have been called for the university's independent counselling," said a JU official.

According to the information brochure, the students already admitted to JU's BTech programme and either continuing or have withdrawn from the same may also apply.

The online application portal to participate in the decentralised counselling will remain open from September 17 to September 20.

A JU official said the figure could go beyond 150 by the time counselling starts as more students enrolled in the BTech programme may quit.

He said even the domicile policy, introduced in 2019, which mandates reservation of 90 per cent of the engineering seats in JU in the general category for students who have passed their Plus-II board exams from Bengal, is failing to prevent the migration of bright students.

A member of the engineering and technology faculty, said when students have so many options to choose from the new NITs which have sprung up in recent times, it is obvious that they would pick ones that they deem better.

A JU professor said seats have remained vacant in coveted streams like computer science and engineering and electronics and telecommunication engineering.

The university has been witnessing vacancies even in coveted streams over the past few years, suggesting that many top-rankers in the state JEE were opting for other institutes such as the NITs and IITs because they have better infrastructure and offer better opportunities.

“Until the infrastructure is improved, top students cannot be attracted just with the lure of the domicile quota or studying engineering at a nominal cost compared to central academic institutes,” said a JU teacher.

“The vacancy figure is bigger this year compared to what was registered last year.”

Last year 138 seats remained vacant.

The university had ranked second among state public universities in an annual ranking exercise conducted by the Union education ministry last month.

However, the university slipped to 12th position among engineering colleges in the same ranking exercise.

JU had ranked 10th last year.

Calcutta University will also hold counselling as at least 50 BTech seats have remained vacant.