MHT CET FE CAP Round 3 vacancy, autofreeze rule

The first six lines on your CAP Round III option form are not soft preferences. Maharashtra’s State Common Entrance Test Cell has put a plain advisory on the First Year Engineering portal: in CAP Round 3, those top six choices will autofreeze. Fill them only with college–branch combinations you are ready to join.

That rule sits in the Information Brochure for Undergraduate and Post Graduate Technical Courses for 2026–27 as well. If Round III allots a seat inside your first six preferences, the allotment freezes automatically. You then move to seat-acceptance steps and institute reporting. You do not get to treat that seat as a throwaway while you wait for Round IV.

What autofreeze means in Round III

Round II already used a shorter autofreeze band — the first three preferences. Round III widens it to six. Seats allotted outside that band can still follow freeze or betterment paths described in the brochure, but the top-six rule is the one families keep under-reading.

After an auto-freeze allotment, the brochure path is clear: report to an Admission Reporting Centre for document verification, or complete self-scrutiny of the documents already uploaded in the online application system, pay the seat-acceptance fee online, then report to the allotted institute. Skip ARC reporting or self-scrutiny and the claim on that seat is forfeited; the seat returns to the pool.

Candidates who held a seat from an earlier round and are chasing upward movement should re-read the brochure clauses on automatic cancellation of the previous seat when a higher preference is allotted. Leaving a weak choice high on the Round III list is how people lock themselves into a branch they never meant to keep. There is no betterment option after Round IV for the general CAP track.

Vacancy PDFs on the official docs host

The Cell has published the provisional vacancy position for CAP Round III on fe2026.mahacet.org, with the PDF hosted on the public CAP documents store. The file carries a published date of 19 August 2026 and runs to hundreds of institute pages. Institute-wise lines in that matrix add up to 28,132 vacant CAP seats across the listed programmes for First Year B.E./B.Tech. and the integrated five-year Master of Engineering and Technology track.

Each institute line breaks seats by category — OPEN, SC, ST, VJ/DT, NTB, NTC, NTD, OBC, SEBC — plus PWD/DEF common reserved seats, EWS and TFWS choice codes where they apply. A companion PDF covers provisional vacancy for a new institute included under a court order in CAP Round III. Use both files before you reorder preferences. The vacancy PDF itself warns that the position may vary and advises candidates to fill all eligible choice codes irrespective of the published vacancy.

Technical helpline numbers printed on the portal for this cycle are +91-9175108612 and 18002098851 (10:00 AM to 06:00 PM).

What to do on the FE portal now

Log in at fe2026.mahacet.org, open the Round III option form from the candidate dashboard, and confirm the form — unconfirmed lists are not considered. The brochure allows a minimum of one and a maximum of 300 institute–course choice codes in decreasing preference order. After confirmation, options cannot be changed for that round. Cross-check choice codes against the vacancy PDFs, not against screenshots circulating on messaging apps.

Exact option-submission cut-off and provisional-allotment display times for Round III load on the portal’s Important Dates / entire-schedule view and can shift. This desk is not inventing a close clock from secondary forwards. Treat the live schedule on fe2026.mahacet.org as the only clock that matters, then keep the autofreeze warning in mind while you sort the first six rows.