Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The admission process for engineering, pharmacy and management courses in the state’s colleges has ended, revealing a significant shift in students’ preferences for technical education.
Over one lakh seats in engineering and management colleges will remain vacant for the entire academic year, reflecting declining interest in these disciplines.
The Department of Technical Education (DTE) conducted counselling for 26 courses, offering 2.6 lakh seats across institutions. However, only 1.5 lakh students secured admission, leaving 1.10 lakh seats unoccupied. Of the 52 engineering branches with a total of 73,000 seats, only 43,000 were filled, leaving approximately 30,000 vacant.
Management courses such as MBA and MCA have also seen a significant number of vacant seats, adding to overall concern regarding technical education. In all, 25,142 seats are vacant in MBA and 2,332 in MCA. About 4,747 seats are vacant in MTech and 13,225 in BE diploma course. According to official data, pharmacy courses have emerged as a popular choice among students this year. Out of 30,000 seats available, 24,400 admissions were secured. Only 6,000 seats remain vacant, with just 1,000 in BPharma and 5,000 in DPharma programmes.
Counselling rounds
This year, the DTE allowed two rounds of counselling and two College Level Counselling (CLC) sessions for pharmacy admissions. However, engineering and management courses were restricted to just one round of counselling. The department also detected and cancelled 65 fake admissions during the online counselling process. A mandatory selfie submission system, implemented to curb fraud, was instrumental in identifying these discrepancies.
