30 FYJC students yet to get seats in Mumbai colleges

Mumbai: After conducting eight online admission rounds, the state’s school education department has finally closed the centralised admission process for the first year junior college (FYJC) students, leaving 30 students stranded, as they could not secure a seat at any college in the middle of the academic year. The state government will now take a call on how to accommodate the stranded students.  

“The students who have not been allotted any seat or did not secure admission even after several rounds and multiple changes have been directed to wait for the state government’s decision as we have vacant seats in several colleges in the city,” said B.B. Chavan, deputy director of education, Mumbai Division. The details have been given to the Mantralaya office where the next step will be decided.  Even after multiple rounds, these students did not manage to secure a seat because of their own mistakes, says the department. Silly mistakes like filing the forms incorrectly, selecting colleges’ name whose seats are full or not filling the forms on the given dates are some of the errors made by the students.

A source close to the department stated that if the decision is taken against the students, which is highly possible as its been already eight rounds, they will have to take admissions in colleges outside the island city and suburbs, if they don’t want to lose their academic year. Parents and students are terrified as they are unsure about what will happen next.

“My daughter’s name was allotted in a Sion-based college, however due to an emergency we could not complete the admission process and later it was automically cancelled and so now we have no idea about what to do,” said a parent, who had come to the deputy director of education office at Charni Road.

According to a government resolution, the college admissions should be given only on a merit basis and through a transparent process. It also stated that if any college is seen providing admission or any student is seen taking offline admission, it may amount to contempt of court.  This year, around 86 city colleges admitted students via offline admission and the state education minister stated that action would be taken against them.

Tale of rounds

This year, four merit rounds were conducted for about 2.3 lakh students between July and August. However, more than 2,000 students were not allotted any seat in these rounds and around 8,000 students did not take admission. After around 10,000 around students were seen without any seat, two special rounds and three first-come, first-serve (FCFS) rounds were conducted.