Bhubaneswar, May 26: The much-awaited results of the Orissa Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) for admission into various professional courses were declared today.
The OJEE authorities have announced names of the toppers for each course.
In engineering, Pratik Gourav of Cuttack headed the list among nearly 54,000 candidates who had cleared the state-level test. Roshan Sahu of Sambalpur has secured the top slot in medical (MBBS and BDS) exam while Aviram Panda of Jajpur district topped in pharmacy.
The other candidates, who have bagged top honours in the OJEE, are Soumya Patro of Balasore in architecture, Anshuman Dash of Bhubaneswar in MBA, Binod Agarwala of Boudh in MCA.
Two other students who have topped the lateral entry exams (for admissions into third semester of degree courses) for technology and pharmacy are Cuttack’s Sarada Prasanna Nayak and Puri’s Suchismita Sabut, respectively.
The declaration of results, supposed to be available online at 1pm, was delayed by almost three hours due to technical snags.
This year, the OJEE was held in two phases on May 1 and May 8 where over one lakh candidates had appeared for the test in 158 centres across the country. Out of this, 127 centres were in Orissa.
While a total of 53,936 examinees have cleared the test in engineering faculty, 2,203 students have qualified for medical courses. Similarly, 11,388 students in pharmacy, 6,868 in MBA, 4,284 in MCA and 3,346 in architecture have successfully passed the entrance exam.
Vice-chairman of the OJEE committee Sitaram Mohapatra said counselling sessions for the candidates, who have qualified for admission into the government and private colleges, would start by the second week of July.
“We would take a decision on Friday on whether the mode of counselling would be centralised or online. Classes are scheduled to begin from the first week of September,” said Mohapatra, adding that the number of OJEE applications had shot up by 15 per cent this time.
Responding to the apprehensions regarding the glaring number of vacancies marked in engineering colleges across the state the previous year, he said: “I don’t see a problem with seats being filled up since around 54,000 candidates have qualified for nearly 38,000 seats available.”
The state has 107 engineering colleges, of which 93 are run by private management. Out of a total seat strength of 37,839, about 18,000 seats went unoccupied in the last academic session, despite conducting two joint entrance exams.
This year, the All India Council for Technical Education has issued guidelines to colleges affiliated to it to waive tuition fee of nearly 1,900 students belonging to economically weaker sections, said the OJEE vice-chairman.
“It is mandatory for all colleges to reserve at least 5 per cent of their seats for the financially weaker students whose parents’ annual income is less than Rs 2.5 lakh. A separate merit list would be generated for them. The 1,900 seats would be supernumerary, that is beyond the 38,000 seats approved by the AICTE,” Mohapatra said.
