Odisha Govt To Conduct 2nd OJEE Every Year

Bhubaneswar: Taking note of large number seats falling vacant in private technical institutes, the Odisha government on Wednesday decided to conduct a second Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) every year to fill up these vacant seats.

The Skill Development and Technical Education department has asked the chairman of OJEE Committee to conduct the entrance test during June-July and set up centres in all the districts in the state

As decided, the second (or special) OJEE will be held for admission into first year B Tech, lateral entry, MBA and MCA programmes.

The OJEE committee would announce the schedule for the entrance test very soon.

It may be mentioned that the decision to conduct the second OJEE came following the orders of the Orissa High Court after it considered the appeal of the private engineering colleges to deal with the rising number of vacant seats. With the order of the High Court, the second OJEE was held for four consecutive years from 2014.

Observing that the state government can look for a practical solution to the issue, the High Court placed the matter before the Policy Planning Body last year which referred it to the government.

During 2016-17 academic session, admission to about 13,000 seats had taken place out of 40,000 seats in 85 private engineering colleges of the state.

The state government, after examining the High Court order and the Odisha Professional Educational Institutions (Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fees) Amendment Act, 2016, decided in favour of making the special JEE an annual affair to provide opportunity to the students of interior and rural areas who fail to appear in JEE (Main) conducted by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

By conducting the special OJEE, the state government will have two different entrance tests for admission. Students who have already appeared in JEE (Main) will also be allowed to appear for the second OJEE

Earlier, the special OJEE was held during July which made it difficult for the OJEE committee to conduct the entrance across the districts.