The West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board (WBJEEB) will start counselling for admission to Engineering/Architecture/Pharmacy degree courses in universities/colleges across the state from 13 August.

Around 99.5 per cent students who cleared the exam, the results of which were declared today, are eligible for counselling. Panchajanya Dey from Rahara Ramkrishna Mission topped the entrance exam. The second and third ranks have been bagged by Soumyajit Dutta of Bankura Zilla School and Bratin Mondal from Santipur Municipal High School in Nadia respectively.

The counselling process has been simplified and the board has done away with the system of verifying documents at reporting centres. Till now, candidates had to report at these centres for verification of documents or certain other formalities.

“This year after registration and filling in their choices through online mode, the student will be allotted the institution. He/she will have to directly go there and seek admission. The document verification will be carried out by the institute itself during admission,” said WBJEEB chairman Malayendu Saha.

There will be three phases in counselling-allotment round, upgradation round and mop up round. The entire process will end by 11 September. The Board has already uploaded a brochure with details of the counselling procedure in the Board’s website and the students are advised to go through it to understand the registration and counselling process.

“Registration is mandatory for counselling and students should select maximum number of choices. A student is advised to select at least 20 choices. They must lock their choices in every round. There are 115 institutes under the Board-both government and private where students can seek admission,” a senior official of WBJEEB said.

The state Joint Entrance examinations was held on 17 July and 92,695 students had registered of which 65,170 appeared. Around 77 per cent students are from Bengal. Of those who appeared, 34,440 students are from institutes affiliated to West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, 19,338 from CBSE, 840 from ICSE and 10,552 from other Boards.

A special counselling will be held for candidates of JEE (Mains) and National Aptitude Test in Architecture (NATA). Both the exams are yet to declare their results. Last year, the total number of seats available for admission were 34,891. Of which, 2,053 were in 10 government engineering and pharmacy colleges, 28,493 in 86 private engineering and pharmacy colleges, 2,283 in 11 state universities and 2,062 in 9 private universities.

According to an official in the Board , the number of seats will be almost the same though the exact number of seats will be notified soon. Meanwhile, Ankit Mondal of MC Kejriwal Vidyapeeth in Liluah Howrah has ranked fourth; Gaurab Das of Narayana E Techno School in Karnataka is fifth; Ayush Gupta of Delhi Public School Megacity in Rajarhat is sixth; Ritam Dasgupta of Army Public School, Kolkata is seventh; Saptashwa Bhattacharjee of BD Memorial International Narendrapur (CBSE) is eighth; Rishi Kejriwal of St Stephens School Dum Dum is ninth and Sauhardya Dutta of Ballygunge Government High School is 10th.