Candidates at an OJEE counselling centre in Bhubaneswar (file picture)

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 14: The vacant-seat syndrome continues to haunt Orissa Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE)-2011 admissions with 30 to 60 per cent seats remaining unoccupied in almost all the disciplines, despite conducting counselling in two phases.

At the end of the first phase of web counselling for engineering courses, around 12,000 of the 38,000-odd seats were filled up. The huge number of empty seats forced the state government to conduct another round of counselling “to fill up as many seats as possible”. However, OJEE authorities said just about 3,000 more candidates have shown interest in admission, which still leaves more than 23,000 seats vacant.

“It is not compulsory for the 3,000 candidates to take admission. Also, if they do not pay the initial fee amount or fail to report to the institute on the given dates, they would cease to be part of the admission process, which means more seats going unoccupied. The faulty and lengthy e-counselling process has put off many aspirants, forcing them to look for other options,” said the principal of a city-based engineering college.

For the medical courses, the second phase of centralised counselling ended last evening. Although MBBS and BDS (dental) seats in all the three government colleges were filled up, 70 of 100 BDS seats at the Hi-Tech (private) Medical College here were still lying vacant.

There are 150 MBBS seats each in the government colleges – VSS, Burla, SCB Medical College, Cuttack, and MKCG, Berhampur. At Hi-Tech, there are 100 MBBS seats and all of them have been filled up. This year, a total of 2,203 medical aspirants had qualified the OJEE and the first phase of counselling was conducted on July 14 and 15.

In other streams, only 40 to 60 per cent seats have found takers. Approximately 4,000 of the 7,000-odd MBA seats and 2,000 of nearly 4,000 MCA seats are up for grabs. In pharmacy, around 1,200 out of 2,000-plus seats are lying vacant.

“We will notify the policy planning body (the highest forum that takes decision on professional education in the state) regarding the vacant seats in all the streams so that they can decide on the next course of action,” said Priyabrat Sahoo, secretary of the OJEE committee.

However, he did not comment when asked whether a second OJEE was likely to be conducted like last year to fill up the vacancies.