Bhubaneswar, June 23: Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) rank holders, who have already locked colleges and streams of their choice, need not participate in fresh counselling starting tomorrow unless they wish to change their options.
The process has been rescheduled from June 24 to July 5 following an order of Orissa High Court earlier this week. OJEE officials said nearly 18,000 of the 62,000-odd rank holders had already undergone the choice locking process.
“Candidates can visit the same nodal centres with their documents again and submit an application for re-locking of choices. Then they will be allowed to lock their final choices again,” said OJEE committee secretary Priyabrat Sahoo. “Those who are sure about their choices need not bother,” he added.
On June 18, the court directed the state government to conduct fresh choice locking for admission to BTech and diploma courses in engineering on the basis of ranks in OJEE-2013 and Diploma Entrance Test- 2013.
The order came in the wake of petitions filed by 30 engineering colleges in the state that despite having the required All India Council for Technical Education approval, the OJEE website did not reflect their seat matrix. More than 3,500 seats have been increased following the approval.
The court, thus, ordered for de novo counselling so that admissions to institutions with enhanced seats were not affected.
In another development, some other colleges have also approached the court for inclusion of their seats in the OJEE seat matrix, said a state government official.
Opeca demand
The Odisha Private Engineering College Association (Opeca) has urged the state government to allow outstation candidates to take admission against vacant seats after the provisional allotment to domicile students.
Association members said around 19,400 outside students had qualified the OJEE this year.
However, only around 3150 seats were reserved for them in the first phase of counselling. Seats falling vacant are open to all candidates.
“We may lose out on several outstation candidates as they would not like to wait for subsequent phases of counselling for vacant seats,” said Opeca secretary Binod Dash.
