DTE Declares 31,662 Vacant Seats; Only 18,671 Candidates Eligible For Final CAP
Round
State director of technical education (DTE) S. K. Mahajan has
projected a vacancy of over 20, 000 seats by the end of the ongoing centralised
admission process (CAP) for non-autonomous engineering colleges this year.
The DTE has declared a provisional vacancy of 31,662 seats for the final and counselling-based
Round IV of the CAP, which is to be held from September 2 to 5 at the Government
College of Engineering (GCoE), Aurangabad.
Against this vacancy, only 18,671 candidates are eligible to be part of the CAP
Round IV, which means the remaining 12,991 will go a-begging straightaway. Even
among the eligible candidates, not all are expected to reach GCoE, Aurangabad, to
get a seat allotted.
Mahajan told TOI on Monday, Much depends on how many candidates eventually turn
up for the final Round IV allotments. Last year, we had nearly 22,000 seats vacant
at the end of CAP. This year too, we expect a similar number of seats to go vacant.
The situation has spurred the top bosses in the department of higher and technical
education as well as the office of the chief minister to rethink the strategy of
promoting engineering colleges in the state. During his recent visit to the city,
CM Prithviraj Chavan dropped ample hints about some policy measures to deal with
the vacancy situation.
Mahajan said, we hope a policy decision will be taken soon at the ministerial and
the CMs level, vis-vis approaching the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry
and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) with a plea to check the
sanctioning of new engineering colleges in the state.
The number of engineering colleges in the state has more than doubled in the last
six years, from 154 in 2005 to 342 in 2011. Most of this growth has been in the
private unaided sector, with some of the leading academic organisations in cities
like Pune, Mumbai and Nagpur opening new campuses at multiple locations. The tier
II and III cities too havent been an exception to this growth.
Consequently, the sanctioned student intake for the engineering degree course has
gone up from 46,325 in 2005 to over 1.32 lakh in 2011. Policy decisions by the
HRD ministry and AICTE to promote second-shift engineering colleges two colleges
running in shifts from the same premises to increase the skilled workforce required
by the industry, have only added to these numbers.
According to the officials of the higher and technical education department, a bulk
of the vacant seats are reported at colleges located in rural, semi-urban areas
or at those established very recently with no brand name to boast of.
The students preference for specific courses like mechanical and computer engineering,
electronics and telecommunication, and infotech, as compared to other branches of
engineering, is also seen as a contributory factor to the vacancy situation.
Meanwhile, the DTE has posted elaborate instructions for the CAP Round IV eligible
candidates to follow in terms of the date and timings of their counselling sessions,
fixed as per the state merit list numbers, on its website: www.dte.org.in.
Courtesy: Times of India
