Punjab blacklists C-DAC as glitches mar ITI admissions

The Punjab Government has blacklisted the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a unit of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, holding it responsible for serious discrepancies in operating the online admission portal for 328 government and private Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs).

Technical glitches in the submission of applications and uploading of documents have hampered admissions for over 60,000 seats across the state. As a result, counselling for the 2025-2026 academic session, which typically begins in May, was delayed until July. Nearly 70 per cent of seats remain vacant due to these technical issues. The 145 government and 183 private ITIs have approximately 44,000 and 23,000 seats, respectively.

Many students reported being unable to access their preferred trades and faced problems submitting and uploading documents. Noting the serious glitches and the failure to address these, the Secretary of Technical Education and Industrial Training has blacklisted the service provider and directed the department to adopt both offline and online modes for this year's admissions.

A senior government official said the department had written to the Centre requesting an extension of the admission deadline until October, citing the need to consider Punjab's ongoing flood situation.

This year, the Department of Technical Education had switched its service provider from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to C-DAC. As the agency is now blacklisted for future work, it has been instructed to implement necessary changes to the portal for the current academic session. The department has also been directed to either hire a professional agency well in advance or establish its own IT cell to streamline the admission process for the 2026-2027 academic session.

Technical Education Minister Harjot Bains recently announced an increase in ITI seats, from 25,000 in 2023 to 52,000 this year. The department has also introduced 814 new trades designed to meet industry needs and market demand.