India, July 17 -- To simplify the admission process for professional courses, the Admission Regulatory Authority (ARA) of Maharashtra has, for the first time, opened its portal directly to students. This will ease the burden of document verification and reduce errors that often derail admissions to engineering, medicine, pharmacy, MBA courses, and 17 other technical and professional programs. The website is in final testing mode and will go live very soon, said sources from the higher and technical education department.

The ARA is responsible for verifying documents submitted by colleges on behalf of students and approving their admissions accordingly. Until last year, only colleges had access to the ARA portal as they were solely respon...