Bhubaneswar, June 17: Private engineering colleges are expecting close to 10,000 students to register for the special Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) that is being conducted by the state.

The exam is scheduled in the first week of July, after the ranks of JEE (Main) are announced on June 24. About 50,000 students from the state took the JEE (Main) this year.

"We are very hopeful this time and expect at least 10,000 applicants for our engineering colleges," said Binod Dash, the secretary of Odisha Private Engineering Colleges' Association (Opeca). However, the colleges have expressed great concern over the delay in admissions in institutes in Odisha.

"The counselling for engineering colleges is already over in Andhra Pradesh, Bengal and Chhattisgarh. The representatives of private colleges had a meeting with the senior officials of the technical education department along with Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) officials yesterday and discussed matters related to the admission procedure," said Dash

The colleges pressed for the immediate amendment to the Odisha Professional Educational Institutions (regulation of fixation of fee) Act, 2007. They told the government that students from Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and the north-eastern states come to Odisha every year for technical education. But they are debarred from taking admission in technical colleges since a low percentage of seats are reserved for candidates not belonging to the state.

"Though around 60 per cent of the seats have been remaining vacant in the past six years, they are not being handed over to the colleges for filling up the seats by themselves as the OPEI Act is silent on this point," Dash said.

The association suggested amendments to the OPEI Act by way of earmarking 50 per cent seats for Odisha candidates and enhancing outside state quota from 15 per cent to 40 per cent. They also want handing over of all the vacant seats to the colleges after the second round of counselling. They also want the filling up 10 per cent NRI seats through college-level counselling.

The private colleges had approached Orissa High Court demanding a special OJEE for candidates who did not appear for the JEE (Main), and yet aspire to take admission in the various engineering colleges in the state.

The association has claimed that these students hail from the hinterland and are absolutely unaware of the new entrance procedures. Opeca alleged that the state government did nothing to publicise the new format to the students. This has also led to the subsequent fall in engineering admissions, the private colleges rued.

The court on its March 24 judgment said a special OJEE should be conducted for seats that woull remain vacant after the JEE (Main) counselling. While the submission of online applications is already going on, the counselling and admission is scheduled from July 8 onwards.

Currently, there are 94 degree engineering colleges in the state with an intake capacity of 48,700. While seven of them are government engineering colleges, the rest are self-financed colleges.