Students gather at the admission counter at Patna College on Friday. Picture by Jai Prakash

Patna, July 15: Students who have not yet taken admission in any college of Patna University (PU), don’t panic. The last date to take admission in three colleges under the university has been extended to July 22.

The three colleges that will benefit from this extension are Patna College, BN College and Patna Science College.

The deadline for admission in all colleges had earlier been fixed for today. However, the rush of students on the final day and the vacant seats in the colleges made the university authorities revise the date.

According to a June 23 decision of the state human resource development (HRD) department, the number of seats in most colleges was almost doubled so that more people could afford higher studies. Ironically, most of the seats in these colleges are yet to be filled up. Even as students celebrated the university’s decision to double the seats the faculty members were sceptical about to how to cope with the increased strength of students with limited resources and infrastructure.

Sudipto Adhikari, vice-chancellor (VC), Patna University, told The Telegraph: “We decided to extend the deadline after a request from the principals of these three colleges requested us to.”

Sources said the principals had written letters to the VC, as many seats remained vacant after the admission process ended today. In Patna College, of the 600 seats only 530 students have been admitted till now. Of them, only 30 were admitted today. There has been an increase of 200 seats this year.

Patna College admission in-charge Randhir Kumar Singh said: “Last year, we had 400 seats. Seats in colleges are not getting filled, as the decision to increase the numbers was taken very late. As a result, many students were not aware of it. The other reason is that students prefer job-oriented vocational courses to traditional ones. As a university has started many vocational courses, more students are getting enrolled in those as compared to traditional courses.”

In BN College, too, many seats in the science and humanities streams are still vacant. Around 70 of 350 seats in the arts faculty are still vacant. In humanities, 100 of the 600 seats are yet to be filled. Sources said the situation in BN College was so grim that student with scores as low as 45 per cent have also been asked to apply for admission.

BN College principal K.K. Maltiyar said: “We have written to the university administration to extend the final date for admission. Many admission seekers were confused about the number of seats, as the decision to increase these was taken only in the third week of June.”

Maltiyar added: “The VC has given us verbal assurance that the date for taking admission in the college has been extended till July 22. I will collect the written order from the his office tomorrow.”

He said he was confident that all the seats would be filled by July 22.

Sources said the problem in filling up seats was related to the subject-wise demand. While many admission seekers opted for geography, history, economics, political science and sociology, other subjects like psychology, philosophy and English had few takers.

Other colleges like Patna Women’s College, Magadh Mahila College and Vanijya Mahavidhyalaya, had been able to fill all their seats.