like in the past four years, the Orissa High Court also on Tuesday ordered the State Government to conduct a special Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) immediately this year so as to fill up the BTech seats lying vacant in several private engineering colleges of the State. Barring in the year 2013, the same process is being repeated since 2011.
Anticipating such an order, a well-prepared Government later in the day announced the examination schedule fixing July 31 as the date for the examination and decided to complete the final seat allotment by August 10. The second JEE to fill up the remaining seats in MCA and MBA lying vacant in several colleges will also be held on the same day.
A Division Bench of the High Court gave the order after adjudicating a petition filed by the OPECA. The petition had contested the intake of BTech students in the Odisha engineering colleges on the basis of a single All India JEE by violating a provision of the Odisha Professional Education Act.
The petition said before merging with the AIJEE, the State Act was not amended. Further the State Act also has a provision to have a second JEE to fill up the vacant seats if any, OPECA president Binod Dash said, adding that more than 32,000 seats are now lying vacant of the 45,000 seats in 93 engineering colleges of the State after the completion of admissions on the basis of the AIJEE.