Varsity takes over third PG admission round after plaints

NAGPUR: After complaints of colleges not following merit list, Nagpur University (NU) has decided to itself conduct the third round of spot admissions for eight postgraduate courses such as MA, MSc, MCM, MFA etc.
Besides complaints, the poor confirmation rate raised alarm among NU PG admission committee led by Pro-VC Pramod Yeole. The MSc courses had received an overwhelming response with 3,764 applying for 1,966 seats.The MA courses had got only 3,704 applications against intake of 13,016.
However, at the start of CAP-II on July 24, the committee found that just 1,153 were admitted in MSc by affiliated colleges and 2,304 in MA. Officials said the committee members were baffled to see that there were still vacancies in MSc while more than double the number of seats had applied. Similarly, not all of the 3,704 turned up for MA courses.
The complaints by different organizations and students bodies confirmed the fears of the committee forcing it to take control of the third round as well.
Late on Thursday night, the competent authority flashed an alert on NU admission portal for affiliated colleges not to go ahead with scheduled spot admissions.
As per the original schedule, NU was supposed to conduct only two online centralized admission process (CAP) rounds followed by spot admissions at college level against vacant seats.
As per June 26 notice, the third round was scheduled between July 26 and 28. Later, it was revised as July 29 to 31. The PG admission committee failed to note that July 29 was Sunday and would result in a loss of one day for spot admissions.
This schedule has been again changed and NU is likely to start spot admissions by counselling at Guru Nanak Bhavan from August 2.
Officials said certain colleges asked several students having high percentage to wait till the start of third round. “We received specific complaints that colleges were deliberately keeping the seats vacant to monetize them during spot admissions. The university would conduct spot admissions but through counselling to ensure transparency and as per merit order,” they said.
Officials explained that in spot admissions too only those who have registered on the online portal for CAP would be allowed.