126 seats vacant in undergraduate courses in Presidency University

KOLKATA: Learning a lesson from last year, Presidency University will start the de-reservation of 120 vacant seats which have been left behind after the first round of counselling that ended on July 20 across 16 disciplines in undergraduate courses. Last year, the number of reserved candidates seats which could not be filled up was 128.
"We have 705 seats available and most have been filled.Only 120 seats which are under the reserved category are still vacant. Also, six general seats are vacant in Hindi. We will immediately apply for de-reservation of the seats so that students can be given admission through second round of counselling," said head of admissions at Presidency University, Aurobindo Nayek. He added, "We have a long waiting list. Thus, we are confident that all the seats will be filled up after another round of counselling."
The main concern of the university authorities, is that there are not too many takers for the UG courses in the reserved category.
"Two things that happened last year, forced us to keep the seats vacant. First, we started our academic session from July 1 and the de-reservation process was delayed. By the time we planned to de-reserve the seats, it was August 30 already and eight weeks into the semester had lapsed. After such a long time we couldn't admit candidates to the UG course as the selected students would have not been able to complete studies for the first semester. We risked to keep the seats vacant but didn't want to deprive students," pointed out a source.
Another reason why seats remained vacant last year, was due to the counselling of medical and engineering courses after Presidency completed the admission process. "Thus, many students went away to take up medical and engineering courses. This time, we are starting our session from August 1. We will finish de-reservation by mid-August. So the candidates will hardly miss ten days of classes," said the source.
Another official alleged that medicine and engineering candidates take admissions in both places. "This year we have already decided and made it clear on the admission portal that the names of candidates who do not attend classes within two weeks after beginning of the academic session will be struck off," a source said.
Last year, education minister Partha Chatterjee intervened after several seats remained vacant in the undergraduate courses at the university. A report was sought from vice-chancellor Anuradha Lohia. The higher education department later suggested Lohia to ensure a timely de-reserving of seats from 2018-19 academic session. They were also asked to consider reducing seats in disciplines where the vacancy was highest but the university refused.