Patna: Counselling for admission into 19 engineering colleges in the state, an exercise being conducted by the Bihar Combined Entrance Competitive Examination Board (BCECEB), gained momentum on Tuesday.

Candidates who have qualified for streams in the state's engineering colleges do not have to report to the BCECEB office in Patna, but to respective engineering colleges of their choice for the counselling/admission process.

Till last year, candidates qualifying BCECEB in engineering had to report to the BCECEB office, where after physical verification of candidates's marks and certificates, they were allotted seats at state engineering colleges.

This year, BCECEB introduced the online choice filling concept under which students had to fill engineering branches and colleges of their choice, followed which seats were allotted to the respective candidates. The candidates were asked to make choice filling of the engineering seats and colleges after the results were declared in mid-July.

Atul Sinha, director (technical) science and technology (S&T), said: "The choice filling process commenced on July 19 and till July 26 candidates were asked to make choice filling of engineering branch and colleges based on their score card." This year, the BCECEB declared the results of around 10,000 candidates against around 4,800 engineering seats in 19 colleges.

On July 28, BCECEB declared the first seat allotment and from July 30 they were asked to report to engineering colleges allotted for first counselling. As per BCECEB guidelines, candidates were given four days - July 30 to August 2 - to accept allotted seats. If a candidates fails to turn up, his or her seat will be allotted to other candidates, who will be called for second counselling. On the first day, Monday, only 276 candidates reported for counselling. But on Tuesday the process gained momentum and around 1,700 candidates turned up for counselling at the allotted colleges.

The students, too, are happy with the new concept. Kumar Abhishek, a candidate who has qualified BCECEB, said: "The new concept is in the larger interest of students, as earlier candidates had to report to the BCECEB office in Patna from where we used to get seats based on the candidate's choice and marks." He further said: "Earlier, candidates had little information about vacant seats and many a time they ended up accepting colleges and branches that were not much in demand."

Sinha said that admissions under the first round of counselling will be completed by the first week of August and the new academic session will commence by August 16. The science and technology (S&T) department has this year opened three new engineering colleges at Vaishali, Banka and Jamui with the number of engineering colleges in the state going up to 19.