Bhubaneswar: Three more courses have been included under the ambit of the special OJEE from this year.

Students willing to pursue BPharm, MPharm and BTech (lateral entry) courses can now take admissions after qualifying in the examination.

"We wanted students to get a better chance for admission," said Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) Board chairman Sudeep Kumar Chand.

The examination will be held on July 22.

The results will be published on July 25. The second (or special) OJEE will be meant for admission into first year BTech, lateral entry, MBA and MCA programmes.

Following the declaration of results, counselling and choice filling will start from July 27 and continue till July 29. The temporary seat allotment will be done by July 30.

Verification of documents of students at nodal centres will be conducted on August 1 following which the final seat allotment list will be published on August 3.

From this year, it was decided that special OJEE would be held every year for admission into seats falling vacant in private technical institutions. The decision was taken after the Orissa High Court last year asked the state government to come out with a "practical and workable solution" to the longstanding issue of vacant seats.

Following huge vacancy in seats in 2014, the high court had directed the state government to hold a Special OJEE test for BTech courses. Ever since, the special OJEE was held in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 following court orders.

Rehab

The Keonjhar district child protection unit rehabilitated three minor orphan children from Baliguda village in the Barbil police station jurisdictions. The children were in distressed condition and sheltered by people living on the neighbourhood of their house as their parents had recently died in a road accident. The children were handed over to the child welfare committee.