OJEE To Go For 4th Round Counselling To Fill Up Vacancies In Engineering Colleges

Bhubaneswar: With more than 65% of BTech seats lying vacant in engineering colleges in Odisha, the OJEE Committee has decided to conduct another round of counselling for the students.

The Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) Committee has already conducted the usual three rounds of counselling. But there have been large scale vacancies in both government and private medical colleges in the state.

Out of total 40,500 BTech seats, only 14,000 have been allotted so far with the private colleges reporting majority of vacancies.  Of the total seats, around 5,000 belong to government colleges for which 70% cent allocation has been done, while only 30% of 35,500 seats in private institutes have been filled up, TNIE quoted OJEE sources as saying.

After three rounds of counselling, the vacant seats are normally handed over to the colleges to fill up seat vacancies at their level. However, this time the OJEE Committee has decided to conduct fourth round of counselling to allot seats to interested candidates. The notification for the 4th round counselling will be issued shortly, they added.

The vacancies in private colleges have increased following government decision to hike 25% seats in all technical and professional institutes in 2022-23 academic session for implementation of 10% reservation for students belonging to economically weaker sections (EWS), TNIE quoted Odisha Private Engineering College Association (OPECA) members as saying.

Following the governemnt decision, BTech seat strength in engineering colleges and institutes, which was around 32,000 last year, has gone up to 40,000 after the hike.

Increase in seats have also forced government colleges to go for promotion and advertisements making enrolment more competitive for privately managed professional institutes. “Keeping all these issues, we have urged the OJEE Committee to wrap up the counselling process at the earliest and hand over the seats to us for their filling up at our level,” OPECA secretary Binod Dash was quoted as saying.