Around 1.21 lakh candidates will appear in the state joint entrance examinations (JEE) this year, over 10,000 more than last year. The exams begin on April 18.

“This year’s enrolment is the maximum in the state JEE’s history,” said Siddhartha Dutta, the chairman of the JEE board.

Last year, around 1.10 lakh students had taken the test.

The examinees will compete for around 28,000 seats in the 77-plus engineering institutions and the 1,100-odd berths in medical colleges of the state.

Officials in the JEE board said close to 46,000 students from other states will write the test, against 38,000 in 2009. In 2008, only 18,000 examinees from other states had enrolled for the state JEE.

“The high academic standard in some of our private technical institutes is fuelling the demand for engineering seats in Bengal among students from other states,” a board official claimed.

Like last year, the examinees from outside Bengal will have to take the test in Calcutta. Till 2007, the board used to set up examination centres in select cities in other states, a practice that had to be discontinued following allegations of malpractice at those venues.

Most of the candidates from outside the state are from Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Assam. A few are also from Maharashtra and some southern states.

The number of centres in Calcutta will be increased this year to accommodate the students from the other states.

Gherao: Several students of the Calcutta Institute of Engineering and Management, a private college in Tollygunge, gheraoed the principal protesting the authorities’ failure to arrange proper placement for students through campus interviews.