March 4, 2014
WB Govt to make online admissions to colleges mandatory from next academic session
Colleges and state universities across Bengal will have to admit all students to undergraduate courses online from the next academic session. The notification on online admission was issued following wide-spread complaints of manipulation during student entry.
The student unions that may have made mockery of admission rules controlling the entire admission process, denying seats to deserving candidates to favour those who had struck a deal with them will be denied to do so. Online admission, to be introduced in the 2014-15 session, will make the process transparent. The new system will also make admission hassle-free. Admission this year is expected to start around July.
In the new system, a student will have to apply for a seat through the website of a college or the affiliating university. The merit list will be posted on and admission conducted through the same portal. Fees can be paid offline. In case of admission to colleges, the process will be supervised by the affiliating university.
Presidency University, Jadavpur University and several colleges under Calcutta University have already started admitting students online. In some colleges, like St. Xavier`s, Brabourne and Asutosh, the process was introduced several years ago. Burdwan University is the only affiliating institution that stopped offline admission last year.
The universities and colleges have also been asked to set up help desks at various levels, widely publicize important dates, tie up with banks for payment of fees and issue a detailed advisory for admission-seekers. It should not take the colleges more than two months to implement the system.
The vice-chancellor of Burdwan University said it took his institution about that much time to put in place the online-only admission system last year. There were some colleges in remote areas where there was hardly any facility to admit students online. But facilities would be set up the within two months. The system is being made more user-friendly. All colleges in the state have the basic infrastructure to start online admission.
The vice-chancellor of West Bengal State University (Barasat), said they had asked the 48 affiliated colleges to state by March 10 if they were facing infrastructural problems in implementing the system.
The notification says that colleges in rural areas, where students do not have Net facilities at home or in the neighbourhood, must set up a dedicated help desk for data entry and registration.
