The state higher education department has tweaked the schedule of its centralised online admissions in colleges, said an official of the department.

“In view of requests received from various students/ guardians/parents, the competent authority has decided to extend the last date of making payments by the allotted candidates in the centralised admission portal till 19th July 2024,” the department announced in a release on Wednesday evening.

Earlier, the last date was July 18.

The schedule of publication of institution-wise and course-programme-wise seat allotment in the upgraded round of the first phase has been deferred by one day — from July 23 to July 24.

Admission against seat allotment in the upgrade round of the first phase will now take place between July 24 and 28.

Earlier, the same exercise was scheduled to take place between July 23 and 26.

Dates of physical verification of documents of the admitted students by the colleges concerned will now start from July 31. It was scheduled to start on July 30.

The start of classes on August 7 has, however, remained unchanged.

The department earlier announced that the candidates whose names featured in the college-wise/institution-wise merit lists published on July 12 will have to pay admission fees online between July 12 and 18.

The merit list was published after the students applied between June 24 and July 7.

The prospective students will have to make payments against a designated bank account mentioned on the admission portal.

When asked why the dates were extended till July 19, education secretary Manish Jain said: “The candidates usually make payments from the cyber cafe. But in many areas, the cyber cafes remained closed on July 17 on the occasion of Muharram. The cafes remained shut from Tuesday itself. Considering all these aspects, we have extended the dates and revised the subsequent schedules in a way so the start of the classes
from August 7 remains unchanged.”

So far in the first round of admission, around 3.20 lakh candidates have been allotted seats out of 4.22 lakh undergraduate seats.

“The remaining seats are likely to be allotted in the mop-up round,” said another official of the department.

It will start on August 8 and continue till the first week of September.

Since the online counselling by the state JEE board for admission to the BTech programmes across the engineering institutions of the state is currently underway, more vacancies are likely to crop up as students who are going to enrol in the undergraduate programmes, may switch to the BTech programmes, he said.

“The allotment in the mop-up round will be available for students who have selected the upgradation option at the time of taking admission and those students who were in the merit panel but have not been allotted any seats in the first round,” the official said.