17,000 engg seats remain vacant

Chennai, Aug 20 (UNI) Nearly 17,000 seats still remain vacant at the end of the month-long general counselling for the engineering course admissions in 248 engineering colleges in the state, according to official sources.

The counselling began on July 17, which concluded today. The supplementary counselling for the students who took up the plus two supplementary government examination would take place on Monday and 646 students have been called for supplementary counselling,the sources said.

The Sources claimed that ''this year 88.5 per cent seats got filled up, as against 74.7 per cent last year. This shows that many students still prefer engineering courses. Number of seats has also increased this year, as non-minority and minority self-financing engineering colleges have surrendered 65 and 50 per cent, respectively to the government single window counselling,the sources added.

Mr Ramachandran, Secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions told newsmen that 64,356 students were called for counselling, 40,937 students joined various courses in government, government-aided and self-financing colleges in the state. ''The total number of seats that was available for the government single window counselling this year was 57,776. As many as 16,839 seats remain vacant at the end of general counselling and 22,932 students did not attend the counselling. A total of 477 students skipped the counselling, as they did not get their desired course or college,'' he added.

He also said many students have opted ECE, CSE and IT and very few students have chose Rubber technology, Textile Chemistry and Paper and Pulp Technology.

Asked the reason for a huge number of engineering seats lying vaccant, he said ''the 16,875 students would have joined self-financing engineering colleges in the management quota or they would have joined deemed universities''.

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