49 per cent engineering seats still vacant ?

NAGPUR: After fourth round of Centralised Admission Process (CAP) of Engineering courses for the academic year 2008-09 in Nagpur division, only 84 seats remained vacant. Barring the 84 seats left after the CAP, most of the new engineering colleges are finding it difficult to fill-up the institute-level seats (popularly known as management quota) and seats accrued to minority educational institutions.

Going by the official figures, as on date, there are 1876 institute level vacant seats while 2762 seats are vacant in minority institutions. Thus, there are 4722 vacant seats in Nagpur Division or RTMNU jurisdiction. Therefore, the last date to admit the students has been extended to September 15. Even on the state-level, the total number of seats left vacant after fourth round of CAP are 742, while 10042 seats are vacant at institute level, the vacancy in minority institutes is 6258 and total vacant seats are 17042. As per official figure, the total intake capacity of engineering colleges is 9592 and total vacant seats are 4722 which is nearly 49 per cent of the intake capacity. However, most of the college managements strongly disputed the figures and pointed out that many colleges have not uploaded data about the actual admissions and hence the official statistics indicate large number of vacant seats. In top-notch colleges, most of the institute level and in minority institutions, the admission was over a month ago. However, the clear picture may emerge once entire list of admitted students is submitted to the authorities and this number may drastically come down. In fact the academic session has commenced in all the new colleges and barring a handful of management quota seats, they have registered impressive admission figures. With new 19 engineering colleges in the region the number of institutes increased to 40 which is the highest number in the state. Many critics alleged that the vacancy would be big in number. But Joint Director Dr Krantikumar Dhote took special efforts and conducted workshop in all six districts and prepared a document to guide the students and parents how to follow the procedure. It bore the fruits and even after entry of new colleges the vacancy at CAP level is not much as compared to last year. From the statistics it is clear that there are less takers for some branches. They include Information Technology with 592 seats vacant seats-mostly institute level seats and seats in minority institutions, while during CAP only 11 seats remained vacant. In Computer Science and Engineering the number of seats remained vacant are 583 with CAP vacancy is 6, the mechanical Engineering registered the vacancy of 419 with CAP vacancy of just 5, Electronics Engineering has 646 vacant seats with CAP vacancy of mere 13. Electronics and Telecommunication recorded 561 vacant seats with CAP vacancy of 15 seats. The statistics of other branches in the region is Electrical Engineering- CAP Vacancy 3, Institute level vacancy 65, minority vacancy 154; Instrumentation Engineering-CAP Vacancy 1, Civil Engineering-CAP Vacancy 9, Institute level vacancy 93, minority vacancy 116, Computer Technology-CAP Vacancy 3, Institute level vacancy 75, minority vacancy 162, Electronics and Communications Engineering- CAP Vacancy 4, Institute level vacancy 61, minority vacancy 193, Mining Engineering-CAP Vacancy 1, Institute level vacancy 8.