The State Government has proposed to increase the number of seats in junior colleges located in rural areas by 15 per cent to help local students take admission in Plus II this academic year.
Initially, it was decided to increase around 25 per cent seats in each college, but it was reduced it to 15 per cent after considering the availability of infrastructure facilities in the colleges in rural areas, Higher Education Minister Badri Narayan Patra told reporters during his visit here on Friday.
He, however, said instructions in this regard would be issued soon to respective colleges after Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik approves the proposal. The college authorities would increase the number of seats in any of the streams considering the number of applications, he said.
The Government has proposed to increase the number of seats to facilitate local students to take admission in the local colleges. A block would be taken as a unit and the students of the block could take admission in any of the colleges in the block, he said.
The Government has proposed to increase the number of seats in rural colleges in view of the high cut-off marks in the leading colleges in urban areas. Many rural students with low marks fail to get admission in these urban colleges, Patra said.
He pointed out that the cut-off marks in the colleges are likely to be increased this year as a larger number of students have passed the High School Certificate examinations in first division.
The Government would appoint more than 270 junior lectures in the colleges before the beginning of the academic session this year. The Government has also written to the Odisha Public Services Commission for recruitment of another around 580 lecturers, he informed.
Presently, around 1,800 lecturers’ posts are vacant in Government colleges, and to meet this problem it is proposed to deploy the surplus teachers from non-Government colleges. About 400 such surplus teachers have been identified in the non-Government colleges, he further informed.