Vijayawada: The students who qualified EAPCET-2021 (EAMCET) are worried over the delay in the starting of counselling to get admissions into engineering courses. Earlier, the Andhra Pradesh government announced the starting of engineering first year classes from October but despite the passing of nearly three weeks, the counselling process for admissions did not start in the state which turned out to be a big worry for nearly 1.35 lakh students and their parents. The EAPCET results were released on September 8 and the government announced the start of the admission process and classes in 10 days. The fixation of fee structure and inclusion of seats in private universities under convener quota are said to be causing delay in starting of counselling process.
The engineering stream examination was held from August 19 to 25 and a total of 1,76,586 candidates had registered for the exam. The candidates who appeared for the examination were 1,66,460 while 1,34,205 students were qualified in the examination with 80.62 percent. The government claimed the announcement of EAPCET-2021 results in a record time of 10 days and further announced the starting of classes by October swiftly completing the counselling process. There are 17 government and 305 private colleges offering engineering courses in 13 districts in the state. The government will finalise fee reimbursement according to the facilities and amenities available in respective colleges.
The counselling and admission process in engineering colleges in adjacent Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had been completed and several students joined various colleges in those states. Students B. Rajesh and S. Basha said the Corona crisis changed the education calendar which was putting a huge impact on completion of syllabuses. They said that nowadays the Coronavirus infections largely decreased to mere 500 to 600 cases per day from earlier 2,500 to 3,000 per day and this was the right time to start engineering classes. They stated that counselling and admission processes were completed in Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states and those colleges commenced classes also.
They stated that any further delay would put a huge impact on subjects and curriculum to complete syllabuses with reduced working days and appealed to the state government to announce counselling and to start classes.
Parents, G. Venkateswarlu and T. Prabhakar said several parents had joined their children in the adjacent states for engineering studies and more students would migrate to Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states if AP failed to announce counselling dates.
Meanwhile, officials informed that the fixation of fee imbursement to colleges would be finalised in a day or two and the admission committee would conduct a meeting to announce the counselling and admissions schedule. They stated that the fee fixations would be completed by October 22 and the government was likely to commence counselling from October 25.
