Students to face tough competition for DU seats

new delhi: students aspiring to get into delhi university are facing a tough competition this time as nearly 1.13 lakh candidates are competing for about 49,000 under graduate seats. as the sale of admission forms for various courses in 61 colleges came to an end, a total of 1,13,471 students have submitted their application forms, gurpreet singh tuteja, deputy dean student's welfare said. the varsity witnessed a huge rush of students on the last day of the 15-day-long admission process with over 21,000 forms being submitted, the highest in a day. 'a total of 1,48,256 forms were sold in the last 15 days and over 8,000 students purchased the pre-admission forms today,' tuteja said. 'we will now scan all forms and make a digital record and classify them. the data will be sent to the colleges in coming days after which the colleges will come up with the first cut-off list,' he said. the first cut-off seat will be announced on june 25. the university offers 49,000 seats this year after adding 7,000 more seats for the second phase implementation of obc reservation. central educational institutions, including du, are implementing 27 per cent reservation for the backward classes in a staggered manner over a period of three years starting from 2008-09 session. these institutions will have to increase their total intake by 54 per cent to implement the obc quota. the varsity this year has introduced a quota for obc students which would be to the tune of nine per cent. the university has increased its seats by 18 per cent to implement the quota. the university had recorded about 2300 vacancies in the reserved seats for obc category last year. similarly, central educational institutions had witnessed about 5,000 vacancies. the issue was taken to the supreme court which had said the vacant seats should go to general category. accordingly, du has said it will fill up such vacant seats with students of general category this year. long queues of students and parents were seen outside the 16 form purchase and submission centres across the city. to make this years admission process hassle-free and disabled-friendly, the university has made elaborate arrangements for the smooth conduction of the process. a team of trained volunteers, sign language experts and interpreters was deputed to assist physically-challenged students. a total of 374 physically challenged students have applied for the popular university this year.