Bhubaneswar, Sept. 9: The ongoing legal battle between the state government and the Piloo Mody College of Architecture over entrance requirements for the Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) programme has hit students hard.

Following a petition filed by the Council of Architecture regarding its eligibility criteria for admissions, no counselling was required for architecture courses in Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) this year.

Hence, the College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneswar, could not fill any of its 40 seats for BArch programme for the second consecutive year. The Piloo Mody College of Architecture, Cuttack, however, has invited applications for admission after the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination wound up its counselling process this season, leaving architecture aspirants on tenterhooks.

“Deserving students could not get seats in the College of Engineering and Technology, which is a premier college offering architecture course in the state. Many students either left for other states or joined other streams because of the ongoing court case that affected the counselling process. The College of Engineering and Technology lost one batch of students, but the private colleges have nothing to lose. They are going ahead with their admissions,” said a senior faculty member at the College of Engineering and Technology. The uncertainty over architecture courses in the state notwithstanding, as many as 10,000 students had applied for BArch course for the academic year 2012-13.

The tug of war, however, has left scores of students in a quandary. The state government and the Piloo Mody College of Architecture have not been agreeing on the eligibility criteria for admissions into architecture.

The state government wants students to be admitted on the basis of both OJEE ranks and the National Aptitude Test in Architecture (Nata) scores, but the Piloo Mody College of Architecture wants it to be done solely on the basis of Nata score.