Bhubaneswar, Sept. 23: The third and final round of e-counselling for Orissa Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE)-2011 admissions has been extended by two days because of the floods.

The “vacancy round” of admissions had started on September 21 and was scheduled to be completed today.

“Several candidates from flood-affected areas have not been able to turn up at the three nodal centres. Therefore, the state government has decided to extend the counselling dates by two days. Registration, choice filling, document verification and choice locking at the nodal centres would be conducted over this weekend to accommodate as many students as possible,” said Priyabrat Sahoo, secretary of OJEE committee.

The counselling process at College of Engineering and Technology (CET), Bhubaneswar — one of the three OJEE nodal centres — has been discontinued due to certain technical snags.

The International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Bhubaneswar, has been fixed as the alternative venue.

“The net connectivity at CET was poor and the candidates faced difficulties during the registration and choice locking process. So, we arranged a bus and took them to the IIIT today,” said Sahoo. The other two nodal centres are at Centre for IT Education, Bhubaneswar, and Government ITI, Rourkela.

After the second phase of web counselling, large-scale vacancy in engineering, MBA, MCA, pharmacy and lateral entry (engineering) streams compelled the OJEE authorities to conduct another round of e-counselling. However, the desperate measure has failed to elicit a good response from the candidates.

“In the last three days, around 1,500 students have attended the counselling session for admission into the various streams. We do not have the break up figure for each stream,” said Sahoo.

After the counselling process is completed on Sunday, seats would be allotted to the candidates on the basis of combined general rank on September 27.

The payment of the part admission fee has to be made from September 28 to 29 followed by reporting at the allotted institution the next day.

Classes in all engineering colleges started from September 9 and many candidates, who have registered themselves in the last three days, are apprehensive that it would be difficult for them to catch up with their classmates.

On the other hand, authorities of colleges offering B.Sc degrees are worried about their seats falling vacant due to ongoing OJEE admissions.