Kolkata: West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board on Thursday issued an order for the decentralised counselling to start for filling remaining seats across the BTech courses. This is for the first time the board will organise the decentralised counselling, which universities previously handled independently to fill seats still vacant. The notice said those who have participated in the three rounds of WBJEE centralised e-counsellings (including pharmacy) and completed admission will not be eligible for the decentralised counselling. The board said it would announce the dates soon.The notice read, “To facilitate admission against such residual vacant seats through a transparent, meritbased, technology-enabled and centrally monitored mechanism, WBJEEB has been authorised to introduce a ‘common online decentralised counselling platform’…This restriction is intended to ensure fairness, prevent multiple claims over seats, and facilitate orderly and transparent allocation of vacant seats to candidates yet to secure admission.” The candidates were asked to register through the official portal of the joint entrance board. The portal will automatically determine candidate eligibility based on rank, domicile, reservation category, and academic qualifications. Fresh registration will be allowed in every phase similar to e-counselling. Engineering professors said the restriction “violates the law of natural justice”.Jadavpur University and Calcutta University have recorded an unprecedented number of vacant BTech seats after the centralised counselling which engineering professors has attributed to the board’s revised counselling rules.JU associate engineering professor Arindam Sil said, “During the ongoing process, rules cannot be suddenly changed or imposed. It may bring legal complications. Decentralised counselling is open to all who are eligible and qualified WBJEE. It should not be restricted to a few. Under one criteria, students with 10+2 marks will also be allowed to participate in decentralised counselling. In our understanding, students who have qualified WBJEE can only sit for decentralised counselling. On what basis the two merit lists of WBJEE and JEE Mains are compared and equated is also very confusing. All these will lead to more vacant seats in govt institutions and students with lower ranks taking admissions.”A student admitted to JU’s mechanical engineering, who was waiting to upgrade to his first choice , electrical engineering, said, “Someone with rank 200 who is waiting for an upgrade to computer science will not get computer science. But someone with much lower rank, who has not got any branch at JU, can move up.”
