Other States - Orissa   

Counselling postponement triggers row

BHUBANESWAR: Enraged over the postponement of counselling for admission into private medical colleges, parents and students blocked the front road of Orissa University of Agriculture Technology (OUAT), the venue of the counselling, here on Sunday.

When several parents, who were not aware of news of the postponement of the counselling, started arriving at the venue in the morning, they were taken aback by the announcement. Many of them came from far away places such as Visakhapatnam, Mumbai, Luckhnow and Kolkata.

They immediately wanted a discussion with Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) authorities.

It triggered heated exchange of words while annoyance writ large among students and parents who accompanied them.

Road blockade, however, did not go down well among locals. Soon a scuffle ensued among parents and local residents. The city police, led by Deputy Commissioner of Police Himanshu Lal, reached the spot to cool down the parents.

“I had taken a lot of pain to reach the spot. Since train services from Kolkata to Bhubaneswar have been badly hit by floods, I spent about Rs. 16,000 towards airfare. On reaching the venue, I got to know about postponement,” said Ashok Sarkar. Bimal Bhuyan, who came from Lucknow, said the JEE authorities were explaining that they had disseminated the information through advertisements in local newspaper but Oriya language newspapers did not go outside the State’s boundary.

Moreover, the authorities posted the information on official website in the last moment and by then most of students have set out for the counselling, Mr. Bhuyan said.

While parents were aggressively arguing on the matter, JEE authorities had no satisfactory answers.

“We went ahead with counselling hoping that approval letter from the government would be received before the date of counselling.

Even we had been pursuing the matter at government level till July 10.

When the approval letter was not available, we had to postpone the counselling,” said JEE chairman R.R. Das. JEE authorities appeared to be the main culprit.

They posted the announcement of cancellation on the official website on late hours of July 11, barely 30 hours before the counselling date. Many parents said they would bear monetary loss unnecessarily due to an indecisive JEE authorities.

“Many students had skipped counselling in other states and engineering streams for admission into medical stream. As the future looks bleak, students will immediately take admission in other streams rather than embracing uncertainty,” Mr. Bhuyan said.

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