Youths jostle to buy admission forms at Daulat Ram College on the north campus of Delhi University on Monday and (right) students stand in another queue to submit forms in the same institution. Pictures by Yasir Iqbal

Rush, chaos, confusion and crash ruled the Delhi University campuses and website as soon as the sale of forms to graduation courses started on Monday.

On the first day, 32,460 offline forms were bought by aspirants — 3,129 of whom also submitted completed forms. However, only 2,305 admission-seekers to the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) could fill the forms online as the university website crashed for a long time because of heavy traffic, said deputy dean (students’ welfare) Malay Neerav.

The university offers about 54,000 seats in 70 colleges affiliated to it.

The offline forms are available at 18 information centres in the north and south campuses of the university while the online forms are available on its website (www.du.ac.in) and also through the Android app (https://play.google.com/ store/apps/details?id=com.leotaur.du) designed by a university professor.

With over 50,000 students having secured more than 90 per cent marks in the CBSE Class XII examinations this year, cut-off marks for various colleges are expected to soar even higher than last year.

As anxious parents and students reached centres early on Monday morning to buy forms, there was a great deal of confusion regarding the new rules of DU in calculation of marks and the subjects that they can use in “best of four” calculation. Despite several guidelines issued by the university that students only have to tender choice of subjects, students were under the common dilemma of what is more important to them — college or course.

Adding to the intense competition for seats is the confusion and scepticism surrounding the centralised forms, which are available online as well as at 18 designated DU centres.

The optical mark recognition (OMR) forms, as they are known, are applicable for all colleges except St Stephen’s and Jesus & Mary College, which have their own admission process and only accept online forms.

Although the university started its online registration process for the undergraduate admissions at midnight on Monday, the website crashed. This is not the first time but third consecutive year when aspirants faced problems in online filling of forms.

Daulat Ram College, one of the centres in the north campus, stopped selling the forms for a few hours after the staff faced protests for distributing the forms at the college gate and not allowing the admission-seekers to come inside the premises. “We had to study so hard to get good marks in Class XII so that we could secure a seat here. But the admission process is so complicated. Also, in this heat it is so cumbersome to buy and submit forms. There are long queues to collect the forms and centres are not offering any facilities to hundreds of aspirants and their guardians,” said Aastha Srivastava, an admission-seeker.

Interestingly, not many students chose the online process. “We are not comfortable with the online mode as the website keeps crashing as it is not reliable at all. So it I thought better to come and buy form on the very first day,” Mazhar Siddiqui, another student said.

The last day for filling forms is June 16 while the first cut-off list will be released on June 24.

National Students’ Union of India, the students’ wing of the Congress, staged protests, demanding better management of the admission process. On the other hand, another set of protests by the Left-backed All India Students Association saw it demanding the rollback of the four-year undergraduate programme, which was introduced last year amid much resistance by teachers, students and parents alike.