Bhubaneswar, Sept. 19: Tech schools across the state are now on a student-hunting spree with the second Diploma Engineering Test 2012 scheduled to be held on September 30.

However, this time round the colleges are targeting SC/ST students in a big way.

The government, as announced this year, will bear the entire course fee for SC/ST students, who will enrol for diploma engineering courses in any tech school in the state.

According to the scheme, the students can feed their admission details online and the payment will be made to their respective college. The first SET entrance indicated that that very few students have taken benefit of this scheme.

“Hardly 12 per cent of the students, who took admissions through the first counselling were SC/ST students,” said secretary Saroj Kumar Sahoo.

“Most of the time, ST/ST students avoid pursuing higher studies for the lack of finance. But, with a scheme like this around, the students should not be facing any hurdle to go for technical education. However, the lack of awareness among the potential beneficiaries is a major bottleneck,” he said.

Private engineering schools had approached the court alleging that many students could not appear the first diploma entrance this year because of the delay in conduct and publication of HSC examination results. Around 6,000 students, who could not appear the first counselling of DET had approached various polytechnics for admission, they had alleged.

The online application for second DET has been made available on the detodisha.nic.in site since September 18 and will continue up to September 24. Students registering online can download their admit card and entrance exam centre details from website. Centres will be at Angul, Balasore, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Berhampur and Rourkela. The results are scheduled to be out on October 3 following which admission counselling will be held at various nodal centres of the state.