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Bhubaneswar, March 6: The Orissa Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) committee has introduced the process of online application to attract more candidates.
Keeping in view the glaring number of vacant seats in private engineering colleges across the state, the committee has also increased number of the examination centres.
The state houses 101 engineering colleges, of which 93 are private colleges.
Out of the total seat strength of 37,839, nearly 18,000 seats went unoccupied in the last academic session, despite holding two joint entrance examinations.
“To fill up the vacancies, we have introduced an online procedure for application, so that aspirants in any part of the country can apply to us. Our target is to attract more outstation candidates for which we have ensured availability of application forms in eight major states apart from Orissa,” said vice-president of the OJEE committee Sitaram Mohapatra.
The sale of application forms began on February 25 and the last date of receipt is March 18. Online application would close on March 15.
The JEE aspirants can download the forms at www.odishajee.com and attach it with a demand draft of Rs 550 to send in their applications. The forms are being sold at various nationalised banks of the state and the JEE cell at Gandamunda in Bhubaneswar.
These are also available at GPOs of other cities such as, Calcutta, Ranchi, Raipur, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bangalore.
Last year, over 70,000 forms were sold by the OJEE, while the figure as on March 4 this year has already crossed 52,000, including 2,000 online applications.
“The response has been quite impressive. However, at this stage, we cannot give the exact number of applications from other states,” said Mohapatra.
Authorities have taken care to see that the OJEE, scheduled on May 1 and 8, do not clash with other all-India entrance exams such as, AIEEE, IIT-JEE (both engineering), AIPMT (medical), CLAT (law) and so on. The number of examination centres has been increased from 15 in seven cities to 30 in 15 cities. For the first time, the OJEE would conduct entrance exams for the post graduation diplomas in management and computer management.
The committee has also launched a 12-hour (from 8am to 8pm) helpline — 0674-2352456 — to answer the applicants’ queries. Around 300 to 400 queries are daily being answered.
