A group of college students. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 13: The revised transfer norms of the department of higher education has barred transfer of ICSE and CBSE boards students to Plus Two and Plus Three colleges.

According to the new rules, only students of the Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE) will be allowed to seek once-a-year transfer. Students of ICSE and CBSE boards, however, will have to wait for the next academic year to apply afresh for admission to their preferred colleges.

The department has also stipulated fixed timeframe for students to seek transfers. Instead of applying throughout the year, students can seek transfer only between September 1 and December 31.

Elaborating on the reason for barring students of ICSE and CBSE boards from seeking transfer, a senior official from the department of higher education said: “Since the boards are different, it becomes very difficult to complete various official formalities. This delays the process.”

He said that the transfer process often took as long as four to five months to be completed. Every year, about 3.5lakh students from the CHSE and around 20,000 students from CBSE and ICSE boards take admission into Plus Two colleges. In yet another decision, the department has decided to allow only first-year students to avail the transfer option.

“This was done to check last minute transfers for petty reasons. However, such transfers will be considered under special circumstances such as job shift, retirement, death of parents and marriage of girl students,” the officer said.

To make the process transparent, the higher education department has decided to apply the cut-off mark criteria on those seeking a transfer. A student can seek transfer only if the applicant has a percentage that matches the cut-off mark criteria of a particular college. Moreover, if there are multiple applicants for vacant seats, the student with the highest mark will get preference. This apart, transfer admissions have also been restricted from degree colleges to autonomous colleges.

Prior to this notification, students of Plus Two colleges had to get approval from the state government to be transferred from one college to another. This resulted in a lot of rush at government offices and incidents of malpractices had surfaced.

Therefore, to reduce unwanted rush at government offices, the department has allowed CHSE to handle transfer cases.