CHENNAI: This year Anna University has reduced 270 seats in its constituent colleges and its departments. During counselling, only 8,840 seats will be available for engineering admissions as against 9,110 last year. The drop in the number of seats has raised eyebrows.
When the rank list was announced on Thursday, TNEA officials said the reduction of seats in the university may have been due to low enrolment of students in a few departments. However, university officials refuted the claim.
According to University Registrar, J Kumar, the university seats are always in demand and they have not reduced the seats due to students not opting. In fact, the seat reduction in a few courses was due to reasons such as shortage of faculty and opening of new courses, he said.
“We have suspended the admission for this year in agricultural engineering and irrigation management because when our students appeared for the State public service commission examination they were facing difficulty as their course was not considered equivalent to the ones offered by agriculture university. Hence, till things get clear we have decided to suspend admission in the course in the present academic year,” he said.
TNEA will organise counselling for 1,72,940 seats available in 479 colleges, said Higher education minister K P Anbalagan while releasing the rank list. He also said at least 15 private engineering colleges had already opted out from online admission due to less number of student enrolment. Totally, 1,27,145 candidates were invited for certificate verification, of which 1,04,406 appeared and 1,03,150 students were found eligible for counselling. In the merit list, Aravind G emerged topper.
The minister said compared to last year more students participated in certificate verification this year. He said the two-day delay in announcement of rank list was because TNEA tried to reach out to students who had not come to TNEA facilitation centres for certificate verification and had instead visited browsing centres. After declaration of rank list, TNEA website remained inaccessible for a few hours.
Counselling for special category students (differently-abled, sports quota, ex-servicemen and vocational stream) will be between June 25 and June 28. Counselling for general category candidates will start on July 3.
Claim refuted
Refuting the claim of low enrolment, University Registrar, J Kumar, the university seats are always in demand and they have not reduced the seats due to students not opting. In fact, the seat reduction in a few courses was due to reasons such as shortage of faculty and opening of new courses, he said.