Early CAP start fills 81.6%UG seats after first round
Times of India | 17 June 2026
Kolkata: The number of vacant seats at the end of the first round of undergraduate admissions through the Central Admission Portal this year is almost a third of the seat vacancy count at this stage last year. Those associated with the process said starting the admission cycle early made all the difference with 81.6% of the seats alloted in the first round already being taken.
Ever since the portal opened, 24.6 lakh applications have been received from 4.5 lakh applicants for 7,232 UG courses. The number of UG seats available under CAP is over 9 lakh across 459 colleges but allotments were restricted to 3.8 lakh in the first round. At the end of the first round, 3.1 lakh took admission, leaving 70,000-odd seats vacant. Last year, at the end of the first round of CAP admissions, around 2 lakh seats remained unclaimed.
The low admission last year could be due to the two-month delay in the start of the admission process, said an official, adding that a legal dispute over the OBC reservation list had pushed back the process. As a result, many youngsters could not take the risk of waiting indefinitely and took admission elsewhere, said the official. But this year, the CAP portal opened within a week of the state board class 12 HS results being declared, leading to the surge in applications.
“We were hopeful that this time, the admission situation would be better than last year because of the early start. Based on the total allotment of seats so far, the first phase of admission went off well,” said a senior official. "We are equally hopeful about the rest of the seats filling up in the upgrade round. After the first and upgrade rounds are over, we will conduct a second round as well.”
The surge in applications and the quick filling up of seats notwithstanding, college principals voiced some of their concerns. “The first phase of admission went off well for seats in the general courses. But the number for basic science subjects has been very poor, and I don’t have much hope for any change in the later rounds,” said the principal of a college. “This year, more seats were filled in the first phase than that last year but the real concern is how many of these students will actually take up the courses and continue for the next three or four years. Because the admissions started early, we saw a good number of students with high percentages taking admission,” another principal said. “But if they leave later once they get through to their desired courses in institutes of their choice once those lists are declared, the same vacuum will be created. What we need is a proper policy to find a permanent solution to this drain and restructure our course curriculums to offer better prospects to students. Only then will we not have to worry about filling up seats.”
The higher education department will release an institute-wise and course-wise list for seats in the upgrade round on June 20. Admissions to that round will be held between June 20 and June 23.