ICAR Let Over 2,500 Seats Go Vacant in Agri Universities

Delhi: Even as thousands of students in the country were eligible and vying for admission into agricultural universities, more than 2,500 seats were left vacant by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) from its all-India quota over the last four years.

This was revealed in response to a Right to Information (RTI) application, as reported by IANS.

The ICAR is an autonomous body under the Ministry of Agriculture that coordinates agricultural education and research in India. It conducts a common national level entrance test—the All India Entrance Exam for Agriculture (AIEEA).

This entrance test is conducted for both undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) courses in the agricultural sciences and allied activities (except veterinary science) for around 80 government or deemed institutions each year.

The AIEEA quota is for 15 % of the total UG seats and 25% of the PG seats in the state agricultural universities, and for 100% seats in all ICAR institutions.

Nearly 30,000 students appear for this test each year. Many candidates prefer taking AIEEA instead of the tests conducted by the various state universities as they can get admission in universities in other states.

According to the RTI reply received on December 10, 2018, a total of 2,558 seats were left vacant for both UG and PG courses combined across the non-ICAR institutes/universities in the last four years. The last AIEEA was conducted in 2018.

For the UG courses, a total 1,463 seats remained vacant while 1,095 seats were not filled in the PG courses.

The RTI applicant, Chandrashekhar Gaur, told IANS: “This is when there were thousands of eligible candidates who could have taken admission. But the ICAR left the job of filling these seats to states, which could not care less.”

Candidates who are selected through AIEEA then go through an online counselling, for which they have to pay a fee of Rs 2,000. The candidates get to choose the university and course but not the college.

The ICAR already washes its hands off the responsibility of filling the seats after the rounds of counselling are over, stating in its information bulletin: “Once the counselling/ admission process is over, filling up of any subsequent vacancies created due to any reasons, shall not be the responsibility of ICAR. No correspondence in this regard will be entertained either from the universities or from any candidate.”

If the ICAR quota seats remain vacant after the final round of counselling, those seats are then treated as university seats, not as ICAR seats, and the council says it is up to the universities concerned to fill them up.

However, given the paucity of higher education opportunities for students in the country, this wastefulness is highly questionable.

As Gaur told IANS, since the government is conducting an exam it ought to take the responsibility of filling the seats as well.

“There should ideally be a mopping up round after the counselling. And if any seats still remain vacant, they should be filled through spot counselling. They can’t wash their hands off it like this,” he said.

Meanwhile, the ICAR is yet to refund money to those candidates who could not given admission even after clearing AIEEA, revealed the RTI.

A total of 25,246 candidates applied for the online counselling after clearing the exam for 1,954 UG seats across the country in 2018.

The ICAR is yet to refund Rs 4,52,34000 to the UG candidates who were left without admission while it has to refund Rs 1,31,36000 to 9,447 PG candidates.

ICAR director general Trilochan Mohapatra did not respond to queries regarding this, said IANS.