Bhopal: SC Extends Deadline For Admissions To Technical Courses Till Oct 20

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended the deadline for admissions to technical, management and other professional courses till October 20, 2023. The order was passed by a two-Judge Bench presided by justice BR Gavai and justice Prashant Mishra.

The order came on a petition filed by the Association of Technical and Professional Institutes (ATPI), which approached the SC seeking an extension to the last date of admissions, which got over on August 31, 2023.

The ATPI argued that even after two rounds of counselling, several thousand seats still remained vacant and some colleges could not admit up to 20% of their seats. There are around 1.25 lakh seats in the state.

Among these universities were Awadhesh Pratap Singh University in Rewa, Harisingh Gour University in Sagar, Maharaja Chhatrasal University in Chhindwara and several others. The ATPI was represented through advocate Siddharth R Gupta and Mrigank Prabhakar.

Siddharth R Gupta argued before the SC that “The counselling for admission to NITs and IITs is on the basis of the JEE-mains merit list, which also continued till August 31, 2023, owing to which the students were involved in the said counselling process and did not take much interest in the state counselling process.”

The admission process for admission to around 75,000 seats of various engineering, technical and management colleges in the State is convened and coordinated by the Department of Technical and Education. The ATPI approached the Supreme Court pleading that the whole counseling process in the state was inordinately delayed, owing to which a large number of students left for other States and thus the seats were not having any takers.