Chaos rules last-minute DU admissions

NEW DELHI: Delhi University’s first experiment in releasing merit lists for left-over seats to undergraduate programmes ended in chaos on Thursday as many high-scoring

NEW DELHI: Delhi University’s first experiment in releasing merit lists for left-over seats to undergraduate programmes ended in chaos on Thursday as many high-scoring aspirants found their names missing while some colleges failed to put up lists at all.

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DU directed the colleges to put up fresh lists by Friday morning.

The university had in a last-minute decision allowed successful candidates to re-apply to colleges with vacancies left after the fifth and final cut-off list, without withdrawing their previous admission.

These colleges received thousands of applications for a handful of seats on July 24-25. In Ramjas College, for example, there were 57,000 aspirants for 100 seats.

The colleges were to put up their merit lists by 5pm Wednesday and hold the verification and admission process on Thursday and Friday. After missing the Wednesday deadline completely, some put up lists on Thursday. But there were problems there too.

At Kirori Mal College, a student with 95% marks found her name missing while others with scores of 93-94% had made the cut. Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College and several others reported similar issues.

“I don’t know how this problem occurred when we applied online. Such trouble is not expected in a big university,” said VK Malhotra, running around for his daughter’s admission. “I withdrew from Motilal Nehru College as I expected to get into another college. Now it seems I may not get admission anywhere,” said Kriti Soni, who has a 90% score.

A senior DU official, who did not want to be named, explained: “Many students who were reapplying registered in the university portal after 3pm on July 25, so the colleges did not have their data. This is one of the reasons for the mess. The other is the large number of applications received .”

The central university—which has 54,000 seats in 63 colleges — said there was no plan to extend or change the schedule .“Students can pay fees up to Saturday noon, so there should not be a problem. If there is a need, the university will take a call,” said dean (students welfare) JM Khurana.

A second merit list will be released on Saturday and the admission process for this batch will end on Tuesday. A third list will be out on August 3.