422 engineering seats filled on Day One of general counselling

A busy day at the counselling centre, Anna University in Chennai, where general counselling for engineering admissions began on Monday.The first day of general counselling under the single window system for engineering admissions saw 422 seats being filled from among the 620 students who attended it at Anna University on Monday.As per the initial intake, 62,337 seats in 266 colleges were available under the government quota as on Monday. By the end of the day, 61,172 seats were available under all categories.

Earlier, handing over allotment letters to 10 top rankers, Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudy said all available seats would be filled this year. Over 25,000 call letters had been issued for the first phase of counselling. A total of 84,000 students had applied for the 65,000 seats that were expected to be filled under the government quota as the counselling proceeds.More seats were expected to come under counselling as the All India Council for Technical Education had given its approval for 15 new colleges. However, no additional seats were available with Anna University.

Of the top rankers eight have been allotted Electronics and Communication Engineering seats and the other two Computer Science seats in Anna University’s constituent colleges. P. Arvind, who was allotted a seat in the College of Engineering, Guindy, was given the first allotment letter.Assuring students from the vocational stream that the Government would heed their demand for more seats, Mr. Ponmudy said separate counselling would be held for them after the first phase was over. A total of 700 candidates had been allotted seats out of the 2,100 who had applied under this stream.

Altogether 1,171 seats have been filled through counselling for special quotas such as physically handicapped, vocational and students from other States.Some of the students allotted seats under medical counselling had given them up in favour of engineering seats, the Minister said.The university has made arrangements to counsel around 1,000 students a day and this would be scaled up to 2,400 as more seats are made available for counselling, Rhymend Uthariaraj, Secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions, said.