Cuttack: The Odisha Private Engineering Colleges' Association (Opeca) has appealed to the state government to conduct a special OJEE re-examination for the thousands of students who could not appear the examination owing to inclement weather conditions on July 22.
The Special OJEE was conducted for admission to first-year BTech courses. While 16,700 students applications were received for the examination, around 13,285 sat for the examination.
Opeca secretary Binod Dash on Thursday claimed that "more than 3,300 students could not appear the examination on the scheduled date due to heavy rainfall and flood situation on July 21 and 22 in several parts of rural Odisha".
"We expected the state government to suo motu consider the case of such large number of students who could sit for the exam. As no such thing happened we were left with no other option to make the appeal," Dash said.
"The appeal was made through a communication to the commissioner-cum-secretary of skill development and technical education department and also the concerned minister on Wednesday," he added.
The association expected the state government to consider for re-examination of special OJEE on a Sunday in Bhubaneswar centre only with an advertisement in all leading newspapers and allow only those students who could not appear in the examination on the scheduled date.
"We feel this proposal will really help all concerned in a great way. Besides, with more than 60 per cent seats lying vacant in the private engineering colleges last year, the absence of 3,300 students from examination means a lot," the Opeca secretary said.
There are 80 private engineering colleges with 40,000 seats in the state. On the basis of rank cards in CBSE conducted all-India JEE (Mains), 12,000 students had taken admission. After the special OJEE results declared on Wednesday another 13,000 odd students are expected to take admissions after the counselling process that starts on July 27 and ends on August 2.
Though Odisha took part in the all-India JEE (Mains) the state government had decoded in principle to conduct special OJEE every year from this year.
