Amaravati, The much-awaited solely online system for admissions to intermediate course in Andhra Pradesh colleges will commence from Friday, Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) Secretary V. Ramakrishna said on Tuesday.

"BIE, AP, issued the notification for online admission into two-year intermediate courses in general and vocational streams in various colleges for the academic year 2021-2022," he said, adding that the state government has issued the necessary memo.

The first phase of admission will open from Friday and end at 5 p.m. on August 23, followed by the second phase.

"The details of registration process and subsequent procedure is available in the website of BIE, ie, https://bie.ap.gov.in as online admissions 2021-22 (APOASIS) user manual," Ramakrishna said.

The board stressed that registration for the course will be completely online for all, obviating the need for pen, paper, and physical forms.

"All the students and parents are informed that the registration process of two-year intermediate course will be completely online for all categories and for all quotas," said Ramakrishna, a senior Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer.

From this academic year, reservations will also be implemented in intermediate admissions, accommodating Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes students in all the colleges, after they were ignored for decades together.

"Seats will be filled up as per the rule of reservations including girls' quota," he noted.

The Secretary also gave the flexibility of changing intermediate group by making sliding facility available.

To make it easy for students to go for online admissions, the board has provided help line centres at district and college level, and advised the students to avail these facilities.

Likewise, students and parents can also clarify issues relating to admissions at toll free number 1800 274 9868 round the clock.

Aiming at wiping out decades-long widespread abuse and indiscriminate commercialisation of intermediate education in the state, the board introduced only online admissions from this academic year.

As many corporate junior colleges illegally collected fees for unapproved offline admissions for the current academic year, Ramakrishna recently ordered those colleges to return the money to the students immediately.

Scores of corporate colleges illegally admitted first year students and even went ahead to conduct online classes without the permission of the board or even the release of online admission notification which only occurred on Tuesday evening.

Ramakrishna, however, made it clear that the board is not responsible for the students who have already taken these illegal admissions and paid the college fees.

He ordered the RIOs across the state to identify the erring colleges and warned them of strong action, including disaffiliation.