This time, PTU to hold online counselling for all 9 courses

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 3

Unlike last year, the IK Gujral Punjab Technical University will hold online centralised counselling for all undergraduate and postgraduate professional courses offered by it for affiliated colleges across the state, including those of the newly set up Maharaja Ranjit Singh State Technical University in Bathinda.

Last year, then Vice-Chancellor Dr Rajneesh Arora, had got online centralised counselling conducted only for B.Tech, B.Pharmacy and B.Architecture courses allowing colleges to hold independent admissions to the MBA, MCA, M.Tech, M.Pharmacy, MCA lateral entry and B.Tech lateral entry.

But this time, the university will hold common counselling for all nine courses through an online software to be run by the National Informatics Centre.

A notification in this regard has been already issued by the Department of Technical Education and Industrial Training and has been uploaded on the university website. The counselling for all courses will be held between July 1 and 31, depending on the schedule of the result of previous courses of aspirants and rankings of entrance tests.

The admission to the MBA will be conducted on the basis of rank in CMAT conducted by the AICTE. The M.Tech admissions will be done on the basis of the GATE score while that of M.Pharmacy on Graduate Pharmacy Aptitude Test conducted by the MS University of Baroda. Other admissions, however, will be conducted on the basis of merit in qualifying undergraduate courses.

The online counselling charges for all courses has been fixed at Rs 2,000, like the previous year.

In 2013, the IKGPTU had held admissions for all nine courses through online counselling but the previous VC had given freedom to colleges to make admissions for the remaining six courses at their own end. With IKGPTU functionaries again reverting to the 2013 procedure, there has been a mixed response.

Barring government colleges, managements of most private colleges are not satisfied with the decision. The Director of a college in Ludhiana expressed his resentment, “In 2013, there had been just 100 admissions conducted through centralised counselling for as many as 9,000 seats in 150 management colleges. The previous VC was wise enough to hand over admissions to colleges last year. We went through the admission process conveniently. This time again, we are getting queries but we cannot entertain them till the IKGPTU completes its own counselling by July 31. So, we will again get held up.”