India, Sept. 2 -- While engineering admissions in Maharashtra are heading into their decisive phase with the state common entrance test (CET) cell releasing the final merit list for the fourth and last centralised admission process (CAP) round on Monday, nearly half the available seats across the state remain vacant despite record registrations this year.

This time around, as many as 2.14 lakh students have registered for engineering courses against an intake capacity of 1.83 lakh seats however only 95,253 candidates have confirmed admission after three CAP rounds, with a staggering 88,507 seats still unclaimed, underlining a sharp mismatch between demand and actual course preferences.

In the third CAP round alone, 1.19 lakh students su...