Seventeen hundred undergraduate students face the prospect of losing a year after being caught in the crossfire between the university and a college.

Calcutta University (CU), in a bid to “improve the academic standard in its affiliated undergraduate colleges”, has triggered a crisis in the admissions to the B. Com (honours) course in Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society College.

The institution has not started the session for first-year B.Com students following a directive from CU that the number of seats be slashed this year from 2,000 to 300.

With the college challenging the university directive in court, time is running out for the 2,000 anxious students and their guardians who are regularly doing the rounds of the Elgin Road campus.

“We are really worried. If the colleges loses the case, our admissions will no longer be valid and most of us will be forced to lose a year for no fault of ours,” said a student, who has been coming to college every day hoping for news of a breakthrough.

The admission process to the B.Com (honours) course was completed in the last week of July at Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society College. “We were initially told that our first day in college would be August 11. But then it was pushed back to September 1 and last week another fresh date, September 18, was announced. We don’t know what to do,” said another student outside the college gates.

Neither the university nor the college authorities had much to offer with the case coming up for hearing on Wednesday.

“The matter is sub-judice… I can’t comment,” said Heena Gorsia, the general secretary of the college.

Dhrubojyoti Chatterjee, the pro vice chancellor, academic, of Calcutta University, was a little more forthcoming: “There was an inspection and we had given the college the number of students they could take in with the present infrastructure and told them that if they wanted to take more students they would have to expand their facilities. They have filed a case in the high court against this and the case is sub-judice.”

Chatterjee was referring to spot inspections in various colleges when admissions for the new session were underway in July. The CU inspection team had identified a number of institutions, including Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society College, admitting students beyond their capacity and then clamped down on the numbers.

“We have been admitting 2,000 students every year to our B.Com (honours) course for more than 12 years. How can the university suddenly order us not to admit more than 300 students with immediate effect?” demanded a senior official of Bhawanipur College.

“Also, if we can arrange seats for 2,000 students writing their B.Com (honours) exams, there is no reason why we cannot accommodate the same number of students in our classrooms throughout the year,” argued another.

With the university refusing to budge from its 300-seats-only stand and the college pushing for 2,000 students, the fate of hundreds of teenagers hangs in the balance. “We can’t get into other colleges mid-session and the doors of colleges outside Bengal are also closing,” said a student.