Bhubaneswar, May 12: Authorities of the Utkal University have completely digitised the postgraduate admission process for all departments.

Students planning to take admission in the postgraduate courses this year can apply on the university website - www.utkaluniversity.ac.in.

The university offers postgraduate courses in around 50 disciplines, including 21 self-financed courses. The online admission process will continue till May 18. With the entire process being digitalised, the applicants will now be issued admit cards within six hours of registration and online payment of the entrance examination fee.

The admit cards can be downloaded from the website and produced during the entrance tests that will be held from May 20 to 29.

Till last year, the process was only partially online, as students had to manually pay their form fee at the varsity office.

An official in charge of the admission process said the e-admission had two stages. In the first stage, the applicants would have to register themselves to attend the examination at the e-admission section of the university website and upload their signatures, photographs and then make the online payment of the requisite fee.

Postgraduate council chairman G.K. Panda said the students, who would qualify for the course, could send the required documents to the respective heads of the departments of the university from June 15 to 30. Classes are scheduled to begin from July 1.

In a related development, a varsity official said the authorities were taking necessary steps to ensure that the students did not face problems due to frequent power cuts.

Regular power cuts in the varsity has made life difficult for the students and staff members.

The students had recently lodged a written complaint with the vice-chancellor, saying that power cuts during examinations were causing severe inconvenience to them.

"We have had a discussion with authorities of the Central Electricity Supply Utility. They said the power cuts were taking place due to some maintenance work in the area," said Panda.

Utkal University Students' Union president Rajesh Swain said the union had written to energy minister Pranab Prakash Das to set up a grid on the campus or ensure power backup.