Punjab mulls making Class XII result basis for BTech admissions

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 27

The Technical Education Department, Punjab, is mulling foregoing the JEE result as the criteria for admission to the state universities, and the affiliated engineering colleges running BTech courses. The officials in the department said the admissions, this year, could be done on the basis of the recently declared Class XII result.

The is so, because the JEE-Main examination has been pushed far behind its schedule and there remains uncertainty on whether it could be held on stipulated dates between September 1 and 6, owing to the Covid-19 spread. All private universities, including Lovely Professional University, Chandigarh University and Chitkara University have already started their admissions on the basis of Class XII result. Even Thapar Institute has decided to go with Class XII result for admission to BTech courses, giving a little edge to those, who had appeared in the JEE-Main in January.

At the same time, even the state universities, government engineering colleges and the affiliated colleges, which have seen a fall in the BTech admissions over the past few years are pressing upon the government to take a final call on the admission criteria. They want the government to quickly release the notification for admission, so that the colleges could satisfy the students’ queries and start admission at the earliest.

The colleges that have tie-ups with Canadian universities are also keen on quickly targeting the students, who are interested in going to Canada on study-basis, after paying fee for the first two years.

Anshu Kataria, President, Punjab Unaided Colleges Association, and Chairman, Aryans Group of Colleges, said, “We are getting a lot of queries regarding BTech admissions, as there is a demand for engineering courses in Chandigarh. We can take admissions only after the government issues a notification and clarifies the admission criteria. As of now, we are also seeing demand for law, pharmacy and nursing courses.”

Anurag Verma, Principal Secretary, Technical Education Department, said, “We will hopefully issue the notification within a week. We have formed committees, and at this juncture, we are looking for feedback on various issues cropping up regarding admissions.” He confirmed that there was a general consensus on not holding admissions further and adopting Class XII result as the criteria.