Bhubaneswar, Aug. 14: More than 31,000 engineering seats are lying vacant across the state even after conducting the Special Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE).

Following seat allotment yesterday, only 4,192 seats were filled. With this, only about 12,000 seats, both in government and private engineering colleges, which consist merely around 18 per cent of the total seats, were filled up this year.

Students reported to the allotted colleges today for completion of the admission process.

The special OJEE results were published on August 11, the choice-filling was held on Saturday and the final selection list was out on Sunday.

About 7,000 students registered for the special OJEE. The application process of the examination concluded on August 7.

While 24,988 out of 45,844 seats remained vacant in 2013, about 30,494 seats of 46,369 could not be filled in 2014.

In 2015, 27,786 seats out of 46,425 were left vacant. Last year, about 75 per cent seats remained vacant.

On August 3, Orissa High Court directed the state government to hold the Special Odisha Joint Entrance Examination to fill up the vacant seats in BTech courses at various government and private engineering colleges.

The court issued the order after the Odisha Private Engineering Colleges' Association sought its intervention as the admission was an all-time low this year with approximately 4,600 candidates taking admission into engineering colleges across the state.

While issuing the direction for Special OJEE, the court endorsed the contention of Opeca that it was the obligation of the state government to fix modalities forfilling up the vacant seats.

An educator said the huge difference between the number of students passing Plus Two in science and the number of seats in the engineering colleges in the state was the reason behind the problem of vacant seats over the years.

"In the past 10 years, the number of seats in Plus Two science might have increased by about 1,000 while the engineering seats have gone up from 8,000 in 2001 to nearly 50,000 at present. This ratio is very imbalanced," said college professor Ajanta Satapathy.

"Private colleges should improve the quality of education and deliver the promises they make to students. They lure them with the promise of jobs in big companies but are unable to place them. This damages the reputation of the college. The colleges must also understand the importance of good teachers and invest in them," academic Santosh Tripathy said.