Admission process on at BJB College in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 25: Spot admission to fill up over 13,000 vacant seats in degree colleges will be conducted on Tuesday between 10am and 5pm. The registration process ended this evening at 5pm.

Three categories of applicants can take admissions for the balance seats — those who were selected in the first and second merit lists but could not take admission, those who slid up for their higher preference, but want to continue in first selection college and have not taken college leaving certificate, and finally, those who have not been selected so far and have not got their higher option.

Candidates need to carry all the necessary certificates such as marksheet, school leaving certificate, applicant’s copy of the application form and supporting documents under any reservation category.

For degree college admissions, 74,968 application forms had been submitted for a sanctioned strength of 57,312 seats in all 162 colleges across the state. At the end of first and second rounds of admission, 44,150 students have already been admitted and 13,162 seats are yet to be filled up.

There are large numbers of vacant seats in every discipline. In arts, 8,021 seats are lying vacant, while in commerce the number stands at 2,690. For science subjects, the number of vacancies in physics, chemistry and mathematics (PCM) is 2,222 and in chemistry, botany, zoology (CBZ), it is 1,666.

According to Chandra Sekhar Kumar, secretary of department of higher education (DHE), every year several seats lie vacant. “Now, the students are more interested in perusing technical courses. So the lack of demand for various graduation courses results in vacancies,” he said.

In case of BJB (Autonomous) College, the number of vacant seats for arts is 64, while for PCM, CBZ and commerce, number of vacant seats is 37, 19 and 30, respectively. BJB principal, Dusmanta Sahu, is hopeful that the seats would be filled up after spot admissions. “None of the seats available in our college goes vacant and this year too, I am confident we will find takers for the balance seats,” he said.

The information regarding vacancies after spot admissions would be updated on July 27 on the DHE website. After this, another round of admission will take place between July 28 and August 3 (including Sundays and holidays) to fill up the vacant seats.

“Aspirants to have buy a form by paying Rs 10 from the college where seats are yet to be filled up,” said G.C. Nanda, who is looking after the admission process of BJB (Autonomous) College.

This year, the DHE has included 162 colleges of the state under e-admission for graduation courses.

Last year, only 53 colleges were covered under this procedure. Classes for first year students in all degree colleges is scheduled to start on July 27.