Bhubaneswar, March 20: Higher education authorities are working on a plan to ensure that candidates applying to non-government colleges in their localities get preference in admission from the next academic session.

Officials said they were concerned that local students were not getting seats in non-government colleges, even though these institutions were set up to cater to their needs.

Students who fail to get admission in top ranking colleges in the city opt for those on the outskirts from where a future switch is possible.

“For instance, when students fail to secure a seat in a Bhubaneswar-based college, which were among their first preferences, they enrol at a private college in Khurda, thereby thwarting chances of local students. We want to avoid this,” said director of higher education Satyakam Mishra.

Secretary of the council of higher secondary education Tusharkanti Tripathy said a few solutions had been looked into to address the problem.

“To accommodate local students, we may have to either give them admission first, irrespective of their merit, or reserve some seats for them,” Tripathy said. Mishra said the third option would be to increase the intake capacity of these colleges. “But that won’t be feasible because there is a limit to increasing seat strength,” he said.