Delhi University’s first One-Year PG Programme offers just around 1,068 seats across 45 programmes, despite thousands of students completing the fourth year under the NEP. An examination of the seat matrix, admission policy, and student experiences reveals a widening gap between institutional promises and reality.

For Delhi University’s first NEP batch, students were persuaded to stay for an additional year on a straightforward promise: complete the fourth year, earn an Honours with Research degree, and fast-track into a one-year master’s instead of the conventional two. The seat matrix, released just a week before this year’s application deadline, tells a very different story: roughly 1,068 seats across 45 programmes for tens of thousands of students who completed the fourth year.

The Bulletin of Information (BOI) for the One-Year Postgraduate Programme 2026–27, published on July 4, 2026, lists 45 programmes across seven faculties. Adding the category-wise seats (UR, SC, ST, OBC-NCL and EWS) gives an approximate university-wide intake of 1,068 seats. M.A. Urdu tops the list with 50 seats, while M.A. English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Philosophy, History, Political Science, M.Sc. Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and M.Com. appear capped at 45 seats each. At the other end, M.Sc. Biochemistry and Microbiology offer just three seats each.

Another important point is that the one-year PG programme is not spread across multiple colleges, unlike the conventional two-year route. M.A. English alone offers more than 500 seats through the two-year programme when the allocations across colleges are combined. The one-year route compresses that entire intake into a single university department for each subject, explaining much of the apparent seat shortage.

The University also released its official guidelines in December 2025, stating that each department’s one-year PG intake would be a minimum of 20% of its existing pre-NEP-sanctioned two-year intake, capped at 45 seats. Smaller humanities departments could increase intake to 40%, while laboratory-based science departments remained capped at 20%. Crucially, the intake formula is based on a department’s pre-existing sanctioned strength – not on the number of students who actually completed the fourth year.

On August 1, 2025, Delhi University’s Vice-Chancellor told PTI that roughly 55% of the 71,000 eligible students – around 40,000 – had opted for the fourth year. DU’s own figures have since varied, with a later report citing a 30% retention rate for the same cohort. Humanities and language departments nevertheless reported the highest participation, with colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College recording 70–80% fourth-year retention in subjects including English and Psychology. Ironically, many of these are the very subjects capped at 45 seats, suggesting that the seat ceiling and the size of the applicant pool move in opposite directions.

The one-year PG intake formula was finalised only in December 2025, months after most students had already committed to the fourth year. The actual seat matrix was published on July 4, 2026, after students had already completed that additional year.

This is what Aanchal, a fourth-year B.A. (Hons.) English student at Hansraj College had this to say about the programme’s implementation:

I enrolled in the fourth year because DU promised it would lead to a smooth one-year M.A. pathway. Instead, the entire year was poorly planned. We weren’t even properly introduced to our syllabus; professors themselves were often confused, and we were buried under assignments, dissertations, presentations and exams. Despite all this, DU never officially informed us about the one-year M.A. admission process; we had to learn about it through a podcast. The biggest betrayal came after we’d already finished the year. The Bulletin came out on July 4 with shockingly few seats. We invested an extra year, our hard work and our trust, only to discover that a two-year master’s will now effectively take us four.

Another student from Kirori Mal College described fourth-year students as experimental props, pointing to delayed syllabi, faculty shortages and assessment rules that changed midway through the academic year. Teachers’ associations have also separately objected that the one-year PG resolution was passed without adequate consultation with faculty.

The bottom line is this: as of July 11, 2026, when registrations closed, Delhi University had still not released the number of applications received for the one-year PG programme – either overall or subject-wise. Without those figures, it is difficult to calculate the applicants-to-seats ratio for any programme.

Whether this amounts to negligence or simply the turbulence of launching a new programme is open to debate. What is harder to dispute is the mismatch between student numbers and available seats, and the University’s failure to communicate that reality in time to students who based an entire year’s academic decision on a promise that Delhi University could not fulfil.

Name-: Arshia Sharma

Email- [email protected] 

Image credits: DuBeat

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