Engineering college admissions trials and travails

He also pointed out that in the 30 per cent seats allotted on State merit list, students have to exercise only three choices, unlike medical and IIT admissions wherein the choices are innumerable. Kabra felt that this was gross injustice to the meritorious students throughout the state. He felt that restricting the choices to only three institutions, defeats the very object of selecting the candidates on merit basis.

The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court on June 25, restrained the State Government and the Director of Technical Education from displaying the 30 per cent merit list, which was scheduled on June 26. For the benefit of Pune candidates, the list was scheduled to be put up on June 26 at the College of Engineering, Pune. The next hearing commenced on June 28.

The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court, on June 28, directed the Government of Maharashtra to offer nine choices instead of the existing three for those seeking admission to engineering courses under 30 per cent State list merit quota.

The bench comprising Justice Narendra Chapalgaonkar and Justice B H Marlapalle also directed the government to allocate 10 per cent of the available seats to chemical engineering and architecture course for the students of five universities in the state which do not have these courses.

This has put a comma to the engineering college admissions, which some insiders say will delay the process by at least a fortnight.

For those readers who are not updated with the 70 per cent and 30 per cent quota here’s a brief. Previously, when centralised admissions were not around, students appearing from Mumbai or Pune region were more in number that those from Marathwada and Nagpur region. Generally, students from Mumbai and Pune used to secure more marks and would therefore get admissions in other centres too. This created a queer situation wherein locals were denied admissions even on home ground. In order to counteract this injustice, the Government of Maharashtra decided that the student must only apply to a university which falls in the purview of his district.

But a new problem arose, three years back, when a student from the Marathwada region topped the merit list. He wanted to join the chemical engineering course in Bombay University but his application was rejected. He filed a writ petition in the Mumbai High Court. The High Court directed the state that no such compulsion on application for college admissions can be made.

To overcome this hurdle, the State government has declared that for every engineering course, 30 per cent seats will be made available for any student from any corner of Maharashtra and this has been effective for the last two years. The remaining 70 per cent seats are allotted only to the students passing Std XII from that particular university area. Hence, the 70 per cent and 30 per cent break up. Every student can apply in both categories.

What is the fall-out of these new turn of events? We asked some principals of leading engineering colleges in Pune and also some anxious students. Unfortunately, Dr Bhagwanrao Dhomkundwar, principal College of Engineering Pune, which is the main centre of engineering college admissions in Pune Division was out of station and was therefore unavailable for comment.