Nagpur: Over 5,000 more students will appear in Thursday’s
MHT-CET from Nagpur region, thus providing a ray of hope for the struggling engineering and pharmacy colleges.
Even across Maharashtra, there is a jump of about 46,000 candidates for the most sought-after entrance examination. However, it was often seen that increase in numbers do not really transfer into admissions, which is witnessing gradual decline over the years.
As per statistics provided by DTE, 45,487 aspirants appeared for MHT-CET last year, while this year, registrations have gone up to 51,027, an increase of 5,540. Similarly, in the state, about 3.80 lakh took the test in 2017, and this year registrations have jumped by over 46,000 to 4.35 lakh.
Speaking to media, joint director for technical education in Nagpur, Gulabrao Thakare, said the exam would be conducted in about 151 centres across six districts coming under their jurisdiction. The exam will be held in three slots and results will be out by June 3, after which admissions will be conducted through centralized admissions process (CAP).
Apart from engineering and pharmacy, even admissions for BSc (Agriculture) courses would be held through MHT-CET this year. However, their admissions would be conducted by the Pune-based Maharashtra Council of Agricultural Education and Research (MCAER).
A majority of 51,000 students will be appearing from Nagpur city (26,361) followed by Chandrapur and Wardha. About 23,498 engineering and 920 pharmacy seats are up for grabs in the region.
Till a couple of years back, there were over 60 engineering colleges coming under Thakare’s jurisdiction, who used to conduct admissions in the region. However, about six were closed down in the last couple of years in Nagpur division, as they failed to attract students.
This year, already three colleges had applied for closure, while many of them sent letters for closing down their non-performing branches like information technology and electronics and telecommunications.
(With inputs from Tejas Mundhada)