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Tribune News Service
Kapurthala, February 13
Claiming that a whopping amount of Rs 42 lakh was being spent on the centralised, online counselling of only 5,800 BTech students each year, Vice-Chancellor of IK Gujral Punjab Technical University Ajay K Sharma today asked Technical Education Minister Charanjit Channi to make all state and private universities fill their seats through the same counselling.
The VC told this to the minister upon his visit at the IKGPTU for a job fair today. As the VC said Punjabi University and Guru Nanak Dev University too had started holding their counselling separately since the past few years, the minister assured him that he would intervene and try to get them back on the system for admissions to the forthcoming academic session.
As of now, the counselling for 65,000 BTech seats of the IKGPTU, Maharaja Ranjit Singh PTU and Punjab Agricultural University is being held through centralised counselling. After other state universities pulled out of the system, applicants lost interest and the number of students coming via counselling has fallen. Most students have begun opting for direct admission only and seats of only top colleges are being filled through counselling. The IKGPTU is paying an amount of Rs 42 lakh to the National Informatics Centre for providing the entire technical support for holding online counselling.
Dr Sharma also told the minister that the private universities had no cap on the number of students being admitted. “This has to be regulated as otherwise we are losing on admissions. The government should bring them too into centralised counselling. I have already moved the proposal through the State Technical Board.”
Asked about the proposal to bring in a regulatory body for private universities, the minister, who was on the three-member panel, said, “We had already given our report to the Chief Minister a year ago.
He has now forwarded our proposals to another panel of private persons. A final decision will come after they too submit their report.”
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