BHUBANESWAR: A large number of Science seats has remained vacant in junior colleges of the State this year. Even as the Department of Higher Education increased the number of seats in 1,515 Plus Two colleges by one lakh, the demand seems to be much less this year.
As on Wednesday, 44,451 seats were vacant in Arts, 71,290 in Science and 27,489 in Commerce stream. There are 2,52,118 seats in Arts stream in 1,515 junior colleges in the State. The strength of Science is 1,42,303 and that of Commerce is 47,087 seats.
While admission to the first and second merit list for this (2015-16) academic session is over with 2,98,210 students enrolling in all the three streams, admission of the spot selection list will be done this week.
In 2014-15 academic year, when there were 1,462 junior colleges in Odisha, 14,555 seats had remained vacant after spot admission.
In Ganjam district, which has 115 junior colleges, there has been no admission to 10,327 Science seats against the revised student strength of 18,459. Similarly in Khurda district which has the highest number of 129 colleges - a majority of them being self-financing colleges - there has been no admission to 9,068 seats of the total 18,012 in Science. Cuttack district having 101 Plus Two colleges, 5,134 of 11,600 Science seats have remained vacant.
Interestingly, in Bhubaneswar, the vacancies are mostly in self-financing colleges as seats in popular institutions like BJB Junior College, Basic Science and RD Women’s College have been almost filled up. As on today, 49 of 598 Science seats are to be filled up in BJB while the number is 66 of 422 in Basic Science and 42 of 422 in RD. Officers in charge of admission in these three colleges are hopeful of filling up these seats during spot admission.
Spot Admission on Saturday
With a large number of seats remaining vacant in junior colleges for 2015-16 academic session, the Higher Education department has decided to fill them through spot admission. Students who were selected in first and second merit list but could not take admission besides, students who have not been selected for any of the admission phases and do not have any other higher education options, are eligible for admission under spot selection. The department stated that no fresh application form needs to be submitted for spot admission, the merit list of which was published in the department website on Tuesday.