Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) to fill up vacant seats in various private engineering colleges will be conducted on July 22.

The state government on Monday notified the schedule for the examination. Students who are willing to appear for the test have been asked to apply between June 25 and July 13.

The second (or special) OJEE will be meant for admission to first year BTech, lateral entry, MBA and MCA programmes. The results will be published on July 25.

The centres for the test would cover all the districts. Students who have already appeared in JEE (Main) will also be allowed to appear for the second OJEE.

The online registration for counselling and choice-filling will start from July 27 while temporary seat allotment will be done by July 30.

Verification of documents of students at nodal centres will be conducted on August 1 while final seat allotment list will be published on August 3.

From this year, it has been that a special OJEE would be held every year for admission to seats falling vacant in private technical institutions. The decision was taken after the Odisha High Court last year asked the state government to come out with a "practical and workable solution to the longstanding issue of vacant seats".

Until 2013, admissions to BTech courses in the state's engineering colleges were done through the OJEE. However, with the state government joining the JEE (Main), a common all-India engineering entrance test, from 2014, students aspiring for BTech seats appeared the JEE (Main) conducted by the CBSE.

Counseling for the OJEE began on Monday.