No takers for 60,000 engineering seats, DTE to consider another round of admission

Even after several rounds of admission, over 60,000 seats in engineering colleges across the state have remained unfilled. This has prompted the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), the competent authority conducting centralized admission, to propose yet another round.

Interestingly, close to 100 seats in govt engineering institutes also remained vacant. There are seven govt engineering colleges with a total student intake of 2,890 and three govt-aided engineering colleges with 1,310.

There were nearly 1.64 lakh seats available this year, for which only 1.04 lakh candidates have applied. Last year, 33.84% of the 1.54 lakh seats were vacant. In 2012-13, the situation was slightly better with 28.05% seats going vacant. Officials say that majority of the vacancies for the last three years are in the less popular courses and in institutes located in the outskirts.

As per the rules, after the CAP rounds and the counselling process, seats left vacant can be filled individually at the institute level. Hence, DTE is still mulling the process to conduct a fresh round and whether it should be opened up for those who have already been allotted a seat.

"We will take a call on the modalities of the special round within a day or two," said a DTE official. SK Mahajan, head of the DTE didn't respond to calls.