Special Correspondent
Mumbai: In a landmark decision aimed at bringing greater transparency to the admissions process, the Maharashtra government has announced that it will take control of 20% of seats previously reserved under the management quota in several key professional courses. Starting this academic year, these seats will be filled directly by the government through the Centralized Admission Process (CAP) based on student merit.
The rule will be implemented across nine professional courses, including engineering, pharmacy, architecture, law, MBA, MCA, design, hotel management, and engineering diploma programs. This move is expected to affect thousands of aspirants seeking admission to private and aided colleges across the state.
According to official data, 329 engineering and 359 polytechnic colleges will come under this new regulation. The move covers 29,924 first-year engineering seats and 22,805 diploma seats, which were earlier handled independently by college managements. These will now be part of the CAP rounds, allowing students to secure admission based on merit rather than through direct institutional selection.
Admissions Now to Be Fully Merit-Based
Until now, management quota seats were often filled through internal processes without strict adherence to merit. With the new system, even management seats will be offered through transparent CAP rounds. However, students admitted under this category will have to pay three times the regular fee, which has raised concerns about affordability for some.
Nonetheless, the state education department maintains that this change is designed to ensure fairness and accountability in the admission system.
Four CAP Rounds to Be Conducted
This year’s admission process will include four distinct CAP rounds:
Round 1: Students must accept the seat allotted as per their highest preference.
Round 2: If allotted a seat from any of the top three preferences, the student must accept it; otherwise, they will exit the admission process.
Round 3: Candidates will provide six preferences, and admission must be taken at whichever option is allotted.
Round 4: Candidates can choose up to 300 preferences from remaining vacant seats and must accept the allotment received.
These changes will apply uniformly to all participating institutes, including private unaided and minority colleges.
Courses Affected by the New Rule
The government has listed the following courses under the new management quota regulation:
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) / B.Tech
Master of Engineering (M.E.) / M.Tech
B. Pharmacy / M. Pharmacy
Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch)
LL.B, LL.M, BGL (Law programs)
MBA
MCA
Bachelor of Design
Hotel Management
Engineering Diploma
Across Maharashtra, there are 354 engineering colleges offering around 1.57 lakh first-year engineering seats. Of these, 8,292 seats belong to government colleges. The remaining 1.49 lakh seats are offered by private institutions, of which nearly 30,000 were previously under management control. With the new policy, all such seats will now be merit-regulated.
The decision reflects the state government’s ongoing efforts to improve the quality and integrity of professional education. By placing management quota seats under CAP, it ensures that admissions across the board follow a single, merit-based framework. While institutions may lose autonomy over these seats, they stand to gain financially, and students can be assured of a more transparent and fair process.
