Tech school is the place to be at and Slot One the space to be in, as placement season sets in.

?The companies prefer the first slot, as it gives them the opportunity to have a look at the entire batch. We have received requests for Slot One from several companies,? said Siddhartha Bhattacharyya, in-charge of placements at Jadavpur University (JU).

Following the last two years? tradition ? and amidst rumours of a directive from the government to give Infosys first crack on campus ? JU has given the most sought-after slot to Infosys, which had picked up 143 students during campus placements last year.

In the past 18 months, officials from the Bengal government have met the Infosys brass a number of times in a bid to bring the Bangalore-headquartered company to Calcutta. Writers? Buildings sources suggest the government has promised a number of sops to the Nasdaq-listed company.

?It is not right for us to comment on whether we have received any specific instructions from the government,? said Bhattacharyya, who is bullish about around 100 companies queuing up to bid for the 800-odd students.

The other major recruiters in JU last year were Wipro (94) and Tata Consultancy Services (84), which will share the second slot, alongside campus regulars like Cognizant Technology Solutions, IBM, HCL and Satyam. The campus interviews for the batch of 2006 will start on May 6.

The Slot One scramble is no different on the other side of the Hooghly, at the Bengal Engineering and Science University in Shibpur, where the placement process is to start some time in July. ?Normally, the placement office draws up the schedule. But this year, we have decided to conduct a perception survey among our 900 students to decide on the slots,? said M.K. Sanyal, in-charge of placements at the state?s oldest engineering college.

With around 50 engineering colleges having sprung up in the past few years, these new institutes on the block are facing the heat of competitive forces. ?In our college, it was a toss-up between two companies. The number of offers from the company that got the second slot was not even 10 per cent of its recruitment figures last year,? said a student.

As companies queue up and placement schedules are brought forward from fourth year to third year, the advantage lies with the students. ?Around 50 per cent of the 7,000-plus students in the various colleges were placed through campus interviews last year and we expect the trend to continue this year,? said Ashok Thakur, vice-chancellor, West Bengal University of Technology, which has around 56 engineering colleges affiliated to it.