Chennai: The uncertainty over MBBS admissions has prompted the higher education department to go ahead with the engineering counselling from July 17 irrespective of counselling for MBBS and BDS courses.
Pointing that over 5,000 of 6,730 top rankers in engineering rank list are eligible to join medical courses, the state government had postponed the engineering counselling, scheduled to have started from June 27, to avoid the vacancies in top engineering colleges.
Announcing that general counselling for BE, BTech courses will start from July 23, higher education minister K.P. Anbalagan said, "We have already postponed the counselling due to delay in Neet results. Now, the students have gone to the court. Since we need at least 35 days for conducting the counselling, we have decided to go ahead."
When asked about the possible vacancies it could create in the engineering colleges, he said, “Conducting the engineering counselling ahead of the medical counselling may result in 1,000 vacancies in top engineering colleges. But we have no choice as the court order mandates the university to start first year classes as soon as August 1. This year we have sought the extension to postpone it at least by a month for obvious reasons.”
As of now, the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions Committee has no mechanism to fill these vacant seats as the counselling is being conducted offline.
As per the new schedule, the engineering counselling will begin with the vocational stream on July 17. It will also be conducted on 18 and the counselling for differently abled will be held on July 19. The certificate verification for students who applied for seats under sports quota will be done on July 19, 20. Sports counselling will be conducted on July 21.
General counselling will begin on July 23 and will go on until August 11.
For supplementary counselling, the students should register on August 16. Supplementary counselling will be held on August 17. Counselling for seats converted from SC (A) to SC category will be held on August 18. TNEA has received 1.41 lakh applications for 1.73 lakh seats available for single window counselling.
Online counselling from next year
To avoid vacant seats in the top engineering colleges, the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions committee will conduct online counselling for engineering admissions from next academic year (2018-19), higher education minister K.P. Anbalagan said here on Thursday.After releasing the engineering counselling schedule he said, “As of now, there’s no provision to fill the vacant seats which will arise if the top rankers choose to join the medical courses after taking part in engineering counselling. That’s why we have waited for almost a month for the medical counselling to go on.” In online counselling, if there are any vacancies at the engineering courses, the next eligible students can get those seats.
“Students can choose their stream and college from their home. If the students switch to medical, agriculture or other courses, the vacant seats will be filled by second phase counselling by next eligible candidates,” he explained.
"It will be similar to the IIT JEE counselling. All the vacant seats will be filled through online." higher education secretary Sunil Paliwal said.
