Ahmedabad: Delays in college admissions through Gujarat Common Admission Services (GCAS) are adding to students’ uncertainty as this could push the first-semester university exams to Jan next year.A special GCAS round for admissions to St Xavier’s College will open on Wednesday to fill around 1,800 seats. A mop-up round for vacant seats in other colleges will begin only from Oct 3 after admissions to St Xavier’s end. Consequently, the overall admission process could continue through Nov. Sources said the admission schedule is then likely to delay the university enrolment process to Dec-Jan.This could make it difficult for varsities to conduct first-semester exam as per the academic calendar. Like last year, these exams could end up being scheduled for Jan.Gujarat University alone has around 31,500 vacant seats, according to varsity sources. “After GCAS held several rounds, universities held admission rounds and individual institutions also conducted rounds. Yet thousands of seats remained vacant,” said Narayan Bharwad, spokesperson of NSUI.“This is a failure of the system. The govt has so far not even declared how many seats are currently vacant across all universities where admissions were conducted through GCAS,” he said.ABVP general secretary Devansh Brahmbhatt said, “We have been protesting against the manner in which GCAS is being conducted. Many rounds have been held so far. We want seats in govt and grant-in-aid colleges to be given priority. However, private college seats are being filled up first.”Ironically, GCAS was introduced to bring uniformity to the admission process across universities and ensure that admissions are completed in time.
