Students attend a class at BJB (Junior) College, Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Oct. 12: The authorities of BJB (Junior) College have proposed to the state government to increase the number of seats in commerce stream in response to the growing demand for the subject. At present, the college has 192 seats in Plus Two commerce, which includes 64 newly added seats.

“The number of seats available in commerce is far less than the number of applications received from students each year. Therefore, we had written to the government several times in the past to consider our request to enhance the number of seats from 128 to 256,” said S.N. Mohanty, principal of BJB (Junior) College.

Mohanty said other well-known junior colleges in the capital such as Ramadevi Women’s College, Rajdhani College and Maharishi College of Natural Law had 256 seats for Plus Two commerce. “However, BJB being a premier institution had only 128 seats. Although we had asked for the number to be doubled, only 64 new seats were sanctioned during the last phase of admissions this year. As expected, all of them were filled up through direct admissions within a day. This shows the popularity of the subject,” he said.

Earlier, The Telegraph had reported that the commerce department of BJB (Junior) College, despite its popularity, suffered from dearth of teachers, insufficient infrastructure and lack of modern technology required for quality education. However, the principal said: “Since only 64 seats have been added, we hope we can make do with the existing teaching staff.”

At the same time, the college has also requested the government to reduce the existing 512 seats in Plus Two arts to 384 from the next session.

“We have four sections of 128 students each in the arts stream, which is a bit too much. In order to fill up all the seats, the cut-off marks for arts is usually kept at less than 60 per cent, sometimes even as low as 45 per cent. So, quality suffers and students with such low marks often find it difficult to cope with the academic system of the college,” Mohanty said.

Asked about the science stream, the principal said it was not possible to increase seats at the moment. The seat strength in science is 544 now. “If it is increased to 600 or beyond, we will need separate laboratories for physics and chemistry but the present infrastructure will not allow room for any more labs. We might mull this over once the existing arts block is converted into the exclusive campus of BJB (Junior) College,” he said.