Result of seat allotment kept on hold

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 15

Even as it was being perceived that the online counselling to BTech, MTech, MPharmacy, MBA and MCA admission in four universities of Punjab would not be affected by the ongoing strike by the staff of the IK Gujral-Punjab Technical University (IKG-PTU), it today had a major implication as the result of the first round of seat allotment, which was to be declared by this evening, has not come out, leaving over 20,000 students and parents in a tizzy.

The IKG-PTU is holding a counselling for its own colleges and those of Punjabi University, Patiala; Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana; and Maharaja Ranjit Singh State Technical University, Bathinda.

Since the counselling had been outsourced to the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the university authorities had been confident that the admission process would not be affected. However, owing to some technical reasons, the fee paid by nearly 2,000 out of the nearly 20,000 students through various banks could not be mapped by the IKG-PTU clerical staff.

As a result, their participation was not reflected on the NIC server and their choice filling could not be done. The NIC staff was, therefore, today asked to put the result on hold till further orders.

Officiating Vice-Chancellor-cum-Secretary, Technical Education, Rakesh Verma said: “There have been some technical glitches due to the ongoing strike. The Dean, Academics, Dr Buta Singh, has sought a week’s extension for declaration of the results. We will see how we are to go about it now.”

While candidates have been turning up on the campus since Friday to get their registration for various courses mapped by the staff of the IKG-PTU, the staff that has been on strike demanding a rollback of the decision of the state government to transfer 50 per cent of its corpus to the newly set up Maharaja Ranjit Singh State Technical University at Bathinda have failed to relent.

The Mulazim Front today burnt the effigy of the Punjab Government as well as of higher officials involved in the funds transfer. The employees raised the slogans against the authorities as well as the Punjab Government and protested by halting the work for the sixth day.

If the PTU’s counselling schedule gets put off by a week, the admissions which were to go on till July 31 would now have to be extended till August 7. The IKG-PTU staff said any delay in counselling schedule would be a violation of the orders of the Supreme Court which has asked universities to wind up the admission process latest by July 31 so that classes can be started on August 1.