Prominent city colleges left with vacant seats

With the conclusion of the FYJC online admission process, many prominent colleges have been left with vacant seats. Principals said that had the deputy director’s office allowed them to fill 20 per cent of the vacant seats, the entire admission process would have finished earlier and students would be attending lectures by now. Currently, around 5,000 students of the 2.32 lakh students who applied for a seat are still without one.

Dinesh Punjwani, principal of R D National College, Bandra, said, “We have nearly 100 seats vacant and are not sure if at the end of the admission process we will be able to fill up all the seats or will be left with more vacant seats. Had there been some offline seats, we could have filled them up and completed the admissions long ago.”

Dr M.Z. Farouqui, principal of Rizvi College, said the college was left with nearly 200 vacant seats. “Our college is ranked as the ninth best in the city, but still we have vacant seats. Nearly, 100 students and parents line up at our gates requesting seats almost everyday, but as we have no jurisdiction on the admission process we had to turn them away,” said Dr Farouqui, adding that many admissions could be further cancelled as students from as far as Badlapur and Vashi had been allotted seats in his college.

Parents also felt that an offline process would have been better. “We are running from one college to another based on the online allotment. If there is a vacant seat in the college of the student’s choice why can’t the college allot it This process is giving us a lot of stress and needs to be revisited,” said Anna Patel, a resident of Bandra, who is seeking admission for her niece in a Bandra college.

Similarly, vacancies have been reported by colleges like Ruia College and Kirti College in South Mumbai with nearly 30 to 60 such seats.

B.B. Chavan, deputy director of education said that the online admission process was in line with the high court order and hence, allowing colleges to allow offline admissions was out of the questions. “There are nearly 70,000 excess seats in Mumbai and colleges will have to cope with it. The prominent colleges should not worry much as there are still two rounds in the offline admission process remaining. They will be able to fill up their seats by the end of this month,” said Mr Chavan.