The State Admission Regulating Authority has flagged several violations of admission rules at private professional colleges in Maharashtra. The irregularities were found during institute level counselling for the 2025-26 academic year across courses such as engineering, management, pharmacy, architecture, law and teacher training. The authority has directed the colleges found in violations to face reprimand and submit an explanation for the lapses. Scroll the article to get more details.
What Went Wrong During Institute Level Counselling
Institute level counselling is a separate admission round. Colleges fill their management quota seats in this round. They also fill the seats left empty after the centralised admission process. These leftover seats are called Against CAP or ACAP seats. Colleges manage this round on their own. This has drawn frequent complaints about merit list manipulation and opaque admissions.
The most serious irregularities appeared at three institutes. One is a pharmacy college. The other two are business schools. All three reported receiving the same number of applications as the available seats. Together they admitted 94 students. These institutes ignore applications routed through the state CET Cell. They accept only the applications made directly to them. Candidates who cannot visit a college can fill a form and send it to the CET Cell. The Cell then gives the list of these candidates to the colleges. The colleges must then create a merit list based on both types of applications. The authority has sought an explanation for ignoring the CET Cell route.
More Violations and the New Surveillance Plan
Fourteen other institutes did not keep a record of applicants' presence during this admission round. Twenty colleges enrolled candidates against vacant economically weaker section seats. These EWS seats had no provision to be filled during this phase. So these admissions also broke the rules. The authorities' Sub committees checked 164 colleges for compliance with the MST CET norms. Only 76 of them follow the admission guidelines. That is less than half of the total. The rest are found guilty of various violations. some did not display the details of available seats on their website. Some failed to publish merit lists. Some lacked the record of students visiting the institute. 11 Institute did not turn up for the verification.
The authority has now tightened the watch. Observers will be appointed at select private colleges. The admission process must be video recorded. Colleges must also maintain a daily record of candidates and their parents attending the process. In a related move the state government had earlier removed institution level admissions for medical courses.
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