MAH LLB CAP 2026: Rounds, Freeze vs Betterment and the ₹1,000 Fee

Clearing the MAH LLB CET does not give you a seat; the Centralised Admission Process (CAP) does. It is a separate registration on a separate portal, with a document check, a merit list, three allotment rounds and then an institute-level round. In 2026 the CET Cell made two changes midway: it re-opened the Round I option form because new law colleges were receiving Bar Council of India approval during the process, and it ended auto-freeze, so every allotted candidate chose between Freeze and Betterment — both for a ₹1,000 seat acceptance fee. This guide lays out the 2026 process from the portals and notices.

LLB 3 Yrs CAP portal 2026-27 (read 29 Sep 2026) and CET Cell notices.

Two details in that schedule matter. Before Round III the portal re-opened the CAP application and option forms for all candidates, with a fresh document scrutiny and merit list — a late second chance for anyone who missed earlier steps. And in the institute-level round, colleges generate their own merit lists through the CAP portal for vacant CAP seats and management-quota seats, and post them on their notice boards and websites; you apply by selecting colleges online, then seek admission according to those lists.

The CET Cell's public notice of 7 August 2026 explained that Bar Council of India and university approvals were "being granted during the admission process", so law colleges were joining CAP in phases. To give every candidate a fair chance at the new colleges it made five changes "only for the Academic Year 2026–27":

Three smaller points in the same notice are easy to miss. The re-opened Round I option form counted only for the Round I allotment; it did not carry forward as a promise for later rounds. A candidate who took Betterment could submit a new option form, or edit the old one, before Round II and again before Round III, so a Betterment candidate can re-rank colleges that joined CAP late. And the notice was issued in both Marathi and English, citing a letter of the Higher and Technical Education Department dated the same day — if a coaching summary contradicts it, the notice on the CET Cell site is what counts.

Two readings from these numbers (ours). First, about one registrant in four never got a verified application in 2025-26 — 59,306 registered, 44,783 verified — and about one in five so far in 2026-27 (55,031 and 42,866). The dashboard does not say why; incomplete documents and unlocked forms are the usual reasons the CAP notices warn about. Second, verified applicants outnumbered seats almost two to one (44,783 against 23,859 in 2025-26), yet 22,917 of those seats were eventually filled: many applicants hold offers elsewhere or drop out, which is why later rounds move so far down the list.