Colleges told to admit ATKT students

10,354 Seats Still Vacant As Std XI Centralised Admission Process Enters Last Phase

The Std XI centralised admission process (CAP) panel has warned junior colleges in the city and Pimpri-Chinchwad against refusing admission to any allowed-to keep-term (ATKT) student, once the student is allotted a seat through the counselling rounds that start from Thursday.

On Wednesday, the panel released the final merit list for seat allotment through the governments ATKT scheme for those Std X students, who had failed in not more than two subjects in the state boards March 2011 exam.
The panel has rejected the forms of 32 students, who sought the ATKT benefit, and has listed 2,313 students in the final merit list. The counselling-based table round admission process for these students will now be conducted from August 4 to 6 at the Fergusson college recreation hall.
The panel deliberately opted for counseling-based admissions for ATKT students to ensure that no college can refuse admission once the allotment is effected, deputy director (education) Sunil Magar told on Wednesday. This was after the panels attention was drawn to incidents in the past wherein prominent colleges have shown reluctance to admit ATKT students. The issue also figured in discussions at Wednesdays meeting of the principals of all 160 junior colleges, which participated in this years Std XI CAP. The deputy director's office had called this meeting to take stock of vacant seats as the admission process moves into the last leg. Classes at all junior colleges are to commence from August 8.

In all, 10,354 seats have remained vacant at the end of the CAP round 1 and the ensuing first and second waitlist admissions that ended on July 31. The vacancy position is worked out after eliminating the quota seats, i.e. the 20% in-house quota for junior colleges attached to secondary schools; the 15% management quota and the 50% quota available to the minority institutions. It may be noted that the CAP panel had declared an overall admission capacity of 63,680 seats,including 4,875 bifocal science seats, at 160 junior colleges this year. It received 54,898 admission forms against this. After elimination of dual forms, i.e. one student applying for two separate streams, the panel had declared 46,545 seats as allotted through CAP round 1. The gap between admission capacity and allotted seats was 17,135 then. The final vacancy position is based on elimination of the quota seats. Last year, the CAP panel had declared 10,268 vacant seats.

Commerce stream English and Marathi medium combine have 4,352 vacant seats, followed by arts streams English and Marathi medium combine vacancy of 3,205, while the science stream has 2,797 vacant seats.
A bulk of these vacancies, according to a CAP official, are in colleges located in far flung areas or have no established brand name.
The vacancy position assumes significance for those students, who could not be part of the Std XI CAP for some reason.Such students will be given admission at the institute level after August 8, Magar said.

Courtesy: Times of India