Gandhinagar: A review meeting of GCAS was held today in the state capital under the chairmanship of State Higher and Technical Education Minister Rushikesh Patel.

Last year, the state government launched the GCAS (Gujarat Common Admission Service) portal for admission to colleges through government universities. Following this, Patel instructed that certain errors in the portal be corrected to make it smoother and easier for the academic year 2025-26, ensuring that no student in the state faces any inconvenience during the admission process.

As a result, the department has implemented a portal with improvements addressing the inconveniences faced last year. These new improvements were also made publicly available, with most of the changes being welcomed by students and parents. The necessary suggestions received from the public have also been incorporated into the new portal.

This year, free form-filling centers will be made operational at every university and college, so that students do not have to go to cyber cafes or other locations to fill out the forms for the admission process.

Additionally, the meeting discussed allowing universities to conduct the admission round according to their requirements by giving them 15 days or by providing a schedule through GCAS.

For the verification of student registrations, the entire process will be carried out by providing honorariums to teachers or staff members at every college and university.

During the meeting, the Minister reviewed in detail matters related to the admission process, including validations, the admission list, offline rounds, live vacancies, live cutoff, and penalties, and made necessary suggestions. To make the entire process easier, coordination between the technical agency and universities will be enhanced through the GCAS cell.

It is noteworthy that the work of updating and verifying data for more than 2,500 colleges in the state is currently underway and will be completed soon.

Furthermore, more than 4.55 lakh UG and PG admissions were processed through the GCAS portal in the academic year 2024-25.

State Education Minister Prafulbhai Pansheria, along with Higher and Technical Education Secretary Ms. Sunaina Tomar, Higher Education Commissioner Dinesh Gurav, Vice Chancellors of 11 government universities and their representatives, and representatives of student organizations were also present at the meeting.

In the meeting, the Vice Chancellors from 11 universities in the state shared their feedback, suggestions, and the challenges they faced. Based on the necessary suggestions, Rushikesh Patel has instructed that the entire system be further simplified. DeshGujarat