MHT CET CAP 2026: BTech seat acceptance fee hiked to ensure every student gets admission, says commissioner

During a press conference held today, the Maharashtra State CET Cell Commissioner, Dileep Sardesai, clarified that the revision in the MHT CET CAP 2026 counselling seat-acceptance fee is meant to ensure that every student gets a seat and to resolve the problem of seat blocking without accepting admission.

Sardesai highlighted that last year, 41,000 students accepted engineering seats in the MHT CET Centralised Admission Process (CAP) after paying a Rs 1,000 fee and left the seats later.

The total number of students not accepting their seats for each round includes:

• 11,000 in the CAP second round
• 3,000 in CAP third round
• 11,040 in CAP fourth round

Eventually, 60,000 students left their MHT CET 2026 CAP BTech and BE allotted seats at different times during the counselling process, eventually taking away the chance of students who could have opted for admission in Maharashtra’s engineering colleges.

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As per the CET Cell, 47,000 seats were vacant after only 23,000 seats were accepted, of which 14,500 students were allotted seats in CAP rounds. And of these 14,500 students, 9000 took admission in the same institute they were allotted a seat in the CAP round.

“They had got the seats earlier and still left it. They would have been eligible for scholarships. We had kept the acceptance fees very low - lower than many colleges' prospectus cost,” the commissioner added.

‘Discourage carrying seats forward,’ says Cell commissioner

Desai also noted that many of the students repeatedly got the same seats in CAP counselling rounds, yet they did not accept the seats allotted. Therefore, it is necessary to resolve problems such as students hanging on to their allotted seats and not confirming them. This deprives many other students willing to get admission via CAP.

Question: Will a higher acceptance fee rate put differential burden on students from different social categories?

Answer: I have no answer to these behavioural aspects. It's an experiment that we are doing for the first time.

“We believe the higher fee rates are reasonable; we see it as a charge for getting another opportunity at allotment,” Desai adds.

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MHT CET CAP 2026 engineering seat acceptance fees

The revised seat acceptance fees for MHT CET CAP 2026 counselling engineering seat allotment rounds are given in the table below.

Students must note that if they get their seat allotment in CAP rounds 2, 3, or 4, the seat acceptance fee of Rs 1,000 will apply to the allotted seat.