An addition of about 14 new colleges and voluntary surrendering of management quota seats by several existing colleges have added more than 17,000 seats to single-window counselling pool for engineering admissions, Minister for Higher Education, P Palaniappan, announced here on Monday.
Releasing the random numbers assigned to the applicants for engineering counselling, the Minister said the total available seats in the government quota has shot up to 1,71,417. The figure last year was 1,54,260, he said. The addition was the direct result of about 14 new colleges joining the counselling pool this year. Palaniappan said a few self-financing colleges have voluntarily surrendered management quota seats to the government, further increasing the seat tally. The overall seats availability, which included both the government quota as well as the management quota, now sands at 2,51,454 seats.
While the total number of applications received was about 1.80 lakh, the minister said there was chance that all those who had applied for admissions would get a seat. There were about 45,000 seats that went vacant at the end of the counselling process last year.
The random numbers that were assigned on Monday would be used as a tie-breaker in case two or more students end up with the exact amount of cut-off marks.
Applicants could access the random numbers on the website of the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) 2012. Officials said the rank list for the counselling would be released on June 30.