Bhubaneswar: Engineering and other technical colleges across Odisha have been granted extra time to finalise admissions for the 2026-27 academic year, with the government pushing the deadline to September 14.
The Skill Development and Technical Education Department has permitted institutions to continue admitting students to first-year programmes as well as through lateral entry into the second year of technical and professional courses until the revised cut-off.
The move aligns with the All India Council for Technical Education’s updated academic calendar for the session and follows a formal request from the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination authorities.
According to an OJEE notice issued on August 22, the extension follows a Skill Development and Technical Education Department notification dated August 21. Counselling portals for both students and colleges have been reactivated, and institutions have been instructed to wrap up all admission formalities well ahead of the new deadline. Officials have made it clear that no further extension will be allowed beyond September 14.
Earlier schedules had targeted the closure of regular admissions by mid-August.
OJEE officials had indicated in July that the main counselling process would likely finish by early August, after which colleges could fill remaining vacancies. At that point, the AICTE deadline stood at August 14. The national regulator later revised its calendar, setting September 14 as the final date for admissions against vacant seats and for lateral-entry intakes, with classes for first-year students scheduled to begin from August 17.
The additional window is expected to offer breathing space to institutions still working to fill seats. OJEE has not yet published figures on how many places remain vacant after this year’s counselling rounds.
Counselling for BTech and other technical programmes started in June following the declaration of OJEE 2026 results. More than 62,000 candidates received ranks for courses such as BTech, BArch, BPlan, BCAT and Integrated MSc.
The extension also coincides with an expansion of Odisha’s engineering capacity. Sanctioned BTech intake has risen by around 5,000 seats for 2026-27 after the addition of about 10 technical institutions, taking the overall capacity to approximately 53,000 seats compared with roughly 48,000 the previous year. Government institutions account for about 6,000 of these places. The increase comes against the persistent backdrop of low occupancy in private engineering colleges, where earlier reports showed that more than half the seats often went unfilled in recent admission cycles.
