Mita Mukherjee

Admissions to all undergraduate courses in West Bengal will be held through a centralized online system from this year to make the process transparent, merit-based and free of irregularities.

Under the new system, students seeking admissions to colleges and universities located anywhere in the state will be required to apply for seats through a single portal, state education minister Bratya Basu said on Thursday.

Till last year candidates would apply through the portals of the individual colleges and universities where they wanted to take a seat.

The decision was taken at a meeting between state education minister Bratya Basu, vice-chancellors of all the 24 state-aided universities and senior officials of the state higher education department today.

However, some unitary universities like Jadavpur University, Presidency University and Rabindra Bharati University are likely to continue to accept applications from candidates through their own portals and admit students  following the system they had been following in the previous years.

All the affiliating universities like Calcutta University, Burdwan University, Kalyani University, West Bengal State University , North Bengal University and Sidho Kanho Birsha University will admit students through the centralized online system, a senior official of the education department said.

“The issue of introducing the centralized online admission system was discussed with all the vice-chancellors today. The vice-chancellors have unanimously agreed to introduce the system from this year. We have introduced the online system to make it transparent and convenient for students,”  the education minister said after the meeting.      

Students will be able to download application forms from the common portal and fill in the forms online. They will be allowed to apply in multiple institutions. But they can take a seat of their choice only in a single institution.

This is the first time the admissions to undergraduate courses in all the state-aided general degree colleges across the state will be conducted through a centralized online system.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee who had promised to introduce a centralized online system in 2014 to make the admission process hassle-free, transparent and student-friendly has given her nod to the higher education department to start the system from the new academic session starting next month.

However, the admission and other eligibility criteria like subject-wise cut-off marks of each institution will be fixed by the individual colleges and universities.

Bengal has a history of students unions meddling with undergraduate admissions. Many undeserving candidates owing allegiance to the ruling party had benefited, whereas the deserving students were deprived from getting the seats because of the interference of the student unions in the admission process. The centralized online system was planned to curb such irregularities.

Also Read: Colleges go online for admissions this year