As many as 73,128 students who qualified in Eamcet engineering stream skipped the ongoing counselling, leaving the managements of engineering colleges jittery.

While a total of 2,07,252 students had qualified in Eamcet engineering this year, only 1,34,124 had turned up for certificates’ verification in over 50 helpline centres across the state, when the deadline ended on Wednesday.

Of them, the officials expect about 20,000 students to opt for B. Pharmacy courses leaving only 1.14 lakh students to opt for engineering courses, while nearly 2,14,689 engineering seats are on offer in the convenor quota in the ongoing counselling.

This means, 1 lakh seats will remain vacant in the convenor quota alone assuming that all the 1.14 lakh students who turned up for counselling take admissions. Not to mention about another 1.04 lakh seats available in management quota, for which there are no takers, barring a few colleges which figure in the top-50 colleges list. The officials of higher education department fear that over 200 colleges will witness “single digit admissions” this year and will head for closure due to vacant seats.­