New Delhi: Nearly 700 undergraduate and postgraduate aspirants who took admission to Delhi University through the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) this year later cancelled their seats, official data shows. It highlights an annual pattern in the admission cycle where withdrawals add to the large number of vacancies at the end of the process.
Such cancellations typically occur when students move to preferred universities during later rounds of counselling or use Delhi University as a temporary fallback option when admission processes of other universities overlap with DU’s.For all these students, however, fee refunds have remained pending for months after withdrawal due to technical glitches and bank detail mismatches. A conservative estimate of the pending amount — based on the number of affected students and Rs 10,000 as the lowest applicable fee — puts the total at nearly Rs 70 lakh minimum. Admission to a DU seat is confirmed only after payment of the full fee, which the university has to refund in case of cancellation. Under UGC guidelines, universities have to refund admission fees within 15 days of cancellation.On Dec 26, DU issued notices listing 630 undergraduate and 63 postgraduate applicants whose refund transactions had failed. These students had taken admission through the university’s CSAS portal via CUET, a distinction the university highlighted, as it later opened admissions through Class XII marks to fill vacant seats too.The notices asked the affected students to update their bank details, using online forms. For these students, the auto-refund process had failed due to an information mismatch, DU said. For undergraduate admissions, the university said: “This arrangement is only for those (630) students whose details are mentioned on this list due to failure of refund. These UG refunds (through CUET) have been processed on Dec 6 as per data provided by the admission branch.” Similarly, for postgraduate admissions, DU said refunds were processed on Nov 20. According to the uploaded lists, several refund failures were marked with reasons such as “invalid account number” or “bank detail mismatch”. While the university attempted auto refunds in Aug, followed by another round in Dec, there was no information available on how many students have successfully got the refunds since the notices were issued. There was also no immediate response from DU’s admission branch on the delay in reprocessing failed transactions.The issue is unfolding against the backdrop of persistent vacancies. This year, DU had around 9,000 vacant undergraduate seats till mid-Sept after exhausting all counselling rounds. This vacancy number was higher than 2024. In 2022, the first year of CUET, about 5,000 seats went unfilled after the mop-up round. The number rose to 7,000 in 2023, while nearly 3,000 seats remained vacant in 2024 despite multiple efforts to fill them.As earlier reported by TOI, nearly 15,000 undergraduate seats have gone unfilled over the three years (from 2022 to 2024), resulting in a revenue loss of over Rs 21 crore. The university has previously defended the CUET-based admission system, arguing that vacant seats were a feature even before its rollout. This year’s UG admission, including spot rounds based on Class XII marks, closed in Sept-end.
