Pune
Edition, 23rd July 2008
Excess Seat Allotment Creates Commotion At FC, Other
Institutions
Pune:
Colleges that are high in demand for std XI seats
are facing the dilemma of accommodating excess students
allotted by centralised admission process (CAP) panel this
year.
The question being raised by college authorities is: Will
the government bear the burden for the additional (teaching)
appointments made for addressing the excess students?
“Already, our existing per division strength has gone
up steadily from 120 to 140 over the last two years,”
the principal of a leading city college told TOI on Tuesday.
“The resultant workload is not taken into consideration
by the government vis-a-vis additional appointments and
salaries.”
Excess allotments are seen as the government’s way
of pushing the ‘sought-after’ colleges to accept
fresh divisions, mostly on a no-grant basis. An unusually
high number of SSC students have passed this year.
Post-seat allotments on Monday, the process for confirmation
of admission started on Tuesday with a heavy rush of students
and their parents at the allotted institutions. At certain
places, authorities found it difficult to manage the rush.
At Fergusson College, the process was held up for some time
when some parents complained that the college was not issuing
them admission forms despite their wards having been allotted
a seat there.
It took an impromptu meeting between 50-odd parents and
the college authorities besides a telephonic discussion
with the divisional deputy director (education) G.K. Mhamane,
to resolve the issue.
“We have decided for now that we will issue forms
to all those students who have been allotted a seat in our
college, irrespective of our official sanctioned intake,”
said A.P. Pujari, officiating principal of Fergusson College.
The college has, nevertheless, despatched a letter to Mhamane
asking the government to accept the burden for additional
teaching appointments.
Fergusson has an overall sanctioned intake of 720 students
for the science stream. “Initially, we had decided
to provide forms to only those number of students, who meet
our sanctioned intake,” Pujari said.
A section of students and their guardians had a genuine
issue as they said it was not their fault if the CAP had
allotted them the college. This led to the impromptu meeting.
At Modern College, which has an intake of 480 each for science
and commerce streams, students and their parents gathered
in large numbers. While a majority of these were there to
confirm their admission by paying the fee, the rest came
to get their grievances addressed.
Most of these complaints related to allotment in colleges
which were not their first three preferences. Some others
were regarding errors being listed in the open category
despite a reservation status.
Citing the day 1 feedback from parents, Modern College vice-principal
Jagdish Chinchore said, “People have this misleading
impression that early confirmation of seat would ensure
them a place in the bifocal stream whereas admissions for
this stream at the college level are scheduled later.”
He said the CAP had set three days for confirmation of allotments.
Still, parents were getting panicky for no good reason.
Madhav Pendse, SP college principal, said the institution’s
intake had gone up to 840 from 720, and it was barely in
a position to accommodate more. “We have not yet taken
any decision on whether to seek additional division,”
he said.
