The colleges which CU has asked to apply for seat increase in some departments are Maulana Azad, Scottish Church, Ashutosh and goenka. But so far they have not received formal approval. Considering the influx of applications, CU is contemplating to increase the seats in more institutes, especially in the demanding departments, so that the meritorious students do not have to struggle to get the seats.
“Yes, we have increased UG seats in many colleges. We are going through the applications and will allow more colleges to add seats so that students who have passed class XII do not have to struggle for admissions,” said Asees Kumar Chattopadhyay, Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, CU.
Colleges have often stated that they have too few seats in some departments to accommodate even a small fraction of applicants. This year, when a record number of students passed Class XII, CU approached some of its affiliated institutions to submit applications for adding more seats in certain departments. Maulana Azad’s principal Subhashis Dutta confirmed that he had applied for more seats after receiving instructions from the university. “We had applied in 2019 but it did not happen. Few days back, we got a message from the university asking us to apply so that the number of seats can be increased and we did. We are yet to get the formal approval,” said Dutta.
The Scottish Church is also one of the colleges that have applied for an increase in seats. Madhumanjari Mandal, principal, said, “We had applied for more seats after the decision of the university.”
Bethune College has yet to increase the number of seats, despite the high demand for subjects such as zoology, physics, chemistry and computer science. “These are all science subjects which have lab based work. Applying for more number of seats in these subjects would have put pressure on our existing infrastructure,” said Bethune College principal Krishna Roy.
Both Jadavpur University And Presidency universities, also known as unitary universities, had no plans to increase their seats at the beginning of the admission process, but the sheer volume of applications has taken them by surprise. “Initially, we had no such plan, but we are going to discuss the matter after all the applications are received,” a Jadavpur University official said.
.