In the final round of undergraduate (UG) admissions, the centralised admission portal (CAP) published the final merit list for the mop-up round, with around 63,000 allotments across 460 colleges statewide.

The CAP received over 1 lakh fresh applications for the mop-up round, which went live from Sept 10 to 13. A total of 8,983 candidates completed the fresh registrations. A list of 63,000 candidates for the fresh allotment was published, and admissions were scheduled till Wednesday. After that, upgradation and admission will continue till Sept 23, and classes will commence on Sept 25.

A significant number of seats remained vacant after the first phase of admission, sources revealed. In the mop-up round, very few students took admissions. Most of the colleges are prepared to run this year’s batch with less than 50% of its actual strength. “We had anticipated this scenario as most of the students had shifted to other states or took admission to private institutions due to the delayed process. So, we have to accept the reality,” the principal of a college said, requesting anonymity.

Behala college principal, Sharmila Mitra, highlighted that in subjects like sanskrit, electronics, and philosophy, almost all the seats in her institution are vacant even as only 30 to 40 seats are available for each course. The college, which recently got its autonomous status but had to conduct UG admissions with CAP, had filled only 500 out of its 1,000 seats.

According to a higher education department official, some reserved category seats go vacant every year. However, he admitted that the delay in the admission process left an impact on filling up of seats. “But the department had nothing to do as the matter was pending before court,” he said. TOI earlier reported that this time over 50% of seats would remain vacant out of 9.4 lakh total seats. Around 2 lakh seats from the allotted seats remained vacant after the first round of admission.