Bhubaneswar, Aug. 1: The response to architecture courses in government-run technical colleges in the state has been lukewarm this year.

Students have overlooked government colleges and made their way to private institutions or institutes in other states.

The poor response has been attributed to disturbances in the admission process in these architecture programmes for the past two years following court cases relating to disagreement between Piloo Mody College of Architecture in Cuttack — a private institute — and Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) in connection with the qualifying entrance test for BArch.

While Piloo Mody College of Architecture has been insistent on taking students on the basis of their scores in National Aptitude Test in Architecture, BPUT wants OJEE qualified students.

Of the 120 BArch seats available in government colleges, only 32 have been filled up. The final counselling data displayed on the OJEE website today shows that only two candidates have locked their choice for architecture in Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, which has 60 architecture seats.

At the College of Engineering in Bhubaneswar, which has 60 seats, only 30 students have taken admission.