FYJC admissions begin, but seat matrix not out yet

Even as admissions under various quotas and bifocal courses are underway, the state education department has still not declared the seat matrix for colleges in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), raising concern that the admission system is not keeping with the requirements of candidates.

Until Tuesday evening, the department had not even declared the total number of seats available for first-year junior college (FYJC) admissions. It had also failed to declare the seat reservations in each of these colleges even as quota admissions at the colleges began on Monday.

“The education department is not conducting admissions as per the norms laid by various competent authorities from time to time,” said Vaishali Bafna, from the System Correcting Movement (Syscom), a Pune-based think tank which has written to the department about the issue.

“Even as admissions have kick-started, students do not have fee details for each college and the available seats under various quotas. This goes against the provisions of the Right to Information Act which mandate this information to be out in the public domain,” said Bafna.

Rajendra Ahire, deputy director of education, said the information will be available soon.

“We have the seat matrix ready and will upload it on the website soon,” said Ahire.

The first merit list for bifocal courses in MMR was declared on Tuesday evening.

Of the 14,481 students who had applied for seats under various colleges, 8,865 students allotted seats. This year, 28,644 seats are available under bifocal courses.

Though the first merit list for bifocal admissions was out, a consolidated list of colleges had still not been uploaded on the admission website. The education department announced that it had granted permission to 28 junior colleges to offer bifocal courses on Sunday even as applications for the courses were supposed to be made by 5pm the same day. “What is the point of announcing new colleges at such a last minute? Parents have a right to know about these details well in advance,” said a parent from Mumbai.

Even as the education department had permitted colleges to increase their seats by 5 to 8 per cent this year, the list of all such colleges which have been permitted to increase intake has still not been made public.

Many colleges said they have not been updated about the new seat matrix yet. “Only after seeing the change in seats in the portal, we got to know that the seats have increased,” said the principal of a South Mumbai college.