Mumbai: The Centralised Admission Process (CAP) for First Year Junior College (FYJC) in Maharashtra is set to resume on May 26, following a technical disruption that forced the authorities to halt the process earlier this week. The glitch occurred on May 21, the very first day of registration, when the education department’s online admission portal crashed, reportedly due to an overwhelming surge in traffic.

Students trying to access the portal were met with a maintenance message, and the site remained inaccessible for several hours. This unexpected interruption prompted the Directorate of Education to temporarily suspend the process and revise the admission schedule to ensure a smoother experience for applicants.

Initially, the CAP process was scheduled to run from May 21-28. With the timeline extended, the registration and college preference submission window will remain now open till June 3.

While the education department issued a statement attributing the pause to efforts aimed at improving the mobile-friendliness and overall usability of the portal, education experts suggested a more fundamental issue: the expansion of the CAP system across the entire state. Previously limited to five regions – Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Nashik, and Amravati – the system now includes all state junior colleges, leading to a substantial increase in user traffic. Critics argued that the government should have anticipated this spike and upgraded the portal’s infrastructure accordingly.