KOLKATA: Calcutta University (CU) is conducting admissions to its 13 affiliated law colleges online this year, including the counselling part, to keep candidates insulated from the cash-for-admission racket operational on many campuses, allegedly run by a section of student unions. This is the first time that the entire admission process to any undergraduate course affiliated to CU is being conducted completely online.Midway through the admission season last year, the higher education department made it mandatory for colleges and universities to do away with the offline method. Till then, only a part of admission — like filling up of the admission form and publication of merit list — would be online with students requiring to visit the campus for counselling, verification of marksheets and payment of fees. This would make them a target for members of student unions, who would pose as volunteers to extract money from them.The education department implemented the new process after complaints started pouring in from several colleges about members of unions taking money from candidates by promising to arrange for admission to courses of their choice. Extortion by a section of unions has become such a big issue that principals of general colleges have urged CU to conduct centralised admission as they were finding it difficult to tackle the unions that enjoy political backing.“We have decided to conduct admission to the first semester of five-year BA LLB course for the academic session 2019-2020 online, including the counselling part. The students will require to visit the colleges allotted to them only after they have secured admission. This will eliminate any interference by the students’ unions,” said an official of the law department.Forms will be available online between June 1 and June 19. Candidates can pay application fees till June 20. E-counselling will be held in three phases, with a gap of at least one week each between every phase. CU has put in place infrastructure and skilled manpower to carry out the entire process online.General colleges under CU are also in the process of putting in place a system to conduct e-counselling, which is the most challenging aspect. Once students need to visit a campus for counselling, they become a soft target for unions, which arm-twist vulnerable applicants to pay up.When a student applies for admission to multiple courses and is found to be eligible for all of those, an in-built mechanism enables the college to conduct online counselling and allows the candidate to pick the first-choice subject. It will ensure that the candidate does not have to visit the college till the admission process is over.