CHENNAI: The counselling under Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) will begin from July 22, higher education minister K Ponmudy said on Thursday. This year the counselling will be completed in three rounds, instead of the usual four rounds, to ensure it is completed as per AICTE timeline of September 15.
Online counselling will be held from July 22 to 26 for special reservation category candidates, including candidates with disabilities, sportspersons and wards of ex-servicemen. From July 28 to September 3, counselling will be held for general category students. Supplementary counselling will be held from September 6 to 8 and SCA to SC seat conversion will be held online on September 10 and 11.
Candidates will be given five days to complete their counselling. They will be given three days to fill the choices of their college and on the fourth day the tentative allotment list will be released. The provisional allotment for the first round of counselling will be released on August 2, following which the candidates have to confirm their seats.
“I am hopeful that the first round of medical counselling would be over by August,” said Ponmudy. The minister added 11,804 seats are available under 7.5% government school reservation category, an increase of 236 from last year. He said that 69% reservation policy will be followed to fill seats during engineering counselling.
The counselling was supposed to begin from July 2, however, due to delay in MBBS counselling, the state government had postponed it to avoid vacancy in premier engineering colleges, as many students give up engineering seats to join MBBS courses. However, with no announcement of medical counselling dates, the higher education department has decided to go ahead with the engineering counselling. As many as 1,78,959 students will compete for 1.57 lakh seats in 430 engineering colleges in the state. This year 3,100 more engineering seats are available compared to previous year.