Counselling for admission to BTech courses in Bengal’s engineering colleges will begin two months after the publication of the state joint entrance examination (JEE) results.
Reason behind the delay — the education department is yet to draw up the seat matrix, said a JEE board official.
The board usually announces counselling schedules along with the publication of results. The process, it said, was likely to begin from the third week of August, subject to the directorate of technical education — a wing under the state education department — preparing the matrix by mid-August.
“This year the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has fixed July 30 as the last date for the update of seats in colleges. Thereafter the department is expected to finalise the matrix. So, we cannot announce the schedule immediately,” said JEE board chairman Malayendu Saha.
“The AICTE has delayed the process,” Saha said.
The three-phased counselling is likely to finish by the end of September.
A total of 80,393 candidates had written the state joint exam on April 30 and 80,132 received rank cards.
This year too six students from the CBSE board featured among the top 10 rankers. The state higher secondary council and the ICSE council had two each among the top 10.
A JEE board official said even those two from the Bengal board are unlikely to pursue BTech in Jadavpur University. “Once the results of the JEE-advanced are out, they will head for the IITs. A senior official of the university recently told us that JU no longer attracts the top-notch students,” the official said.
“The rate of vacancies at JU suggests this.”
The Telegraph had reported in December 2021 that 435 seats out of 1,253 — more than a third of first-year BTech seats — had remained vacant across the 16 BTech disciplines at JU after the centralised counselling conducted by the JEE board.
In JU, students who ranked within 61 and 180 respectively in the Bengal JEE, opted for computer science and engineering and electronics and telecommunication engineering.
“Since most of the vacancy had occurred in these two disciplines, it was clear that the bright students of Bengal were preferring the IITs and NITs,” said Atal Chowdhury, JU’s former dean of engineering who conducted the decentralised counselling.
The Bengal government in late October had allowed engineering colleges to conduct counselling and select students for admission on their own as 30 per cent of the 34-000 odd BTech seats remained vacant.
The count this year will become clear after the receipt of the seat matrix, said JEE board registrar Dibyendu Kar.
The board had last year scrapped the practice of an engineering aspirant getting testimonials verified at a reporting centre before seeking admission to a college to cut down the lengthy counselling process. “This will continue,” said a board official.
