Undergraduate seats in colleges affiliated with Calcutta University are being reduced following an assessment of demand across disciplines.

CU’s syndicate on Friday decided to cut seats in four disciplines at Scottish Church College — Bengali, philosophy, Sanskrit and the multidisciplinary programme (earlier known as pass papers).

College principal Madhumanjari Mandal said the decision was based on a review of student intake trends over the past five years, which was submitted to the university to ask for the reduction.

• For Bengali, the number of seats has been reduced from 44 to 25
• Philosophy seats have been cut from 55 to 25
• Sanskrit seats have come down from 50 to 20
• In the multidisciplinary programme, intake has been halved from 100 to 50

At the same time, CU has increased BBA seats. “The university has increased seats in the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) course from 50 to 100 based on demand. We submitted documents to justify the increase,” Mandal said.

Other colleges had made similar proposals. The principal of New Alipore College, Joydeep Sarangi, said the institution had sought a reduction of 225 undergraduate seats across disciplines such as mathematics, economics, Bengali and Sanskrit because of low enrolment.

“There are not enough takers for these seats,” he said.

Teachers across colleges said a significant number of seats in general streams have been going vacant.

At Lady Brabourne College, principal Siuli Sarkar said a meeting would soon be held with department heads to discuss the need for “seat rationalisation”.

CU registrar Debasish Das said colleges have been encouraged to make realistic assessments of demand so that resources can be used more efficiently.

“Colleges can raise or reduce seat counts based on demand. It is not prudent to keep seats vacant, as this also affects college performance in national rankings,” he
said, referring to the National Institutional Ranking Framework.

Das added that similar requests from other colleges are under review and that inspectors of colleges have been asked to examine enrolment data.

Last year, state education minister Bratya Basu had said that the education department would reassess undergraduate seat capacity in government and aided colleges in light of falling demand.

The reassessment became necessary after a large number of seats remained vacant over the past few years, an education department official said.

In September 2025, the education department asked colleges to independently fill unoccupied seats after several rounds of centralised counselling. Of the 9.4 lakh undergraduate seats on offer, only 2.71 lakh students secured admission through the centralised portal.

Even in leading institutions such as Lady Brabourne, some disciplines saw nearly half the seats go unfilled.