HYDERABAD: Additional 5,000 students are likely to opt for seats in engineering colleges in the State this year with Karnataka closing the door on outsiders and the Maharashtra Government reducing the intake of students from other States.

The trend in the ongoing engineering counselling clearly reflects this. Expectations of students, who are devising their strategy based on the combination of courses and colleges based on previous year's ranks, are going awry.

A seat in Electronic and Communications Engineering (ECE) and Computer Science Engineering (CSE) in sought-after colleges like CBIT and Vasavi College of Engineering was available for 1,800-odd rank holders last year. But the same rank student this year has to satisfy with a seat in the not-so-good college.

Officials at the counselling centre attribute the increase to denial of Government quota seats in Karnataka to non-Karnataka students and reduction of seats to non-Maharashtrians to five per cent from 20 per cent last year.

"More than 5,000 State students used to prefer engineering colleges in Karnataka and Maharashtra for various reasons. Now, they are all opting for colleges here," says Raghunath, Camp Officer at the Hyderabad counselling centre.

The introduction of entrance test by Birla Institute of Technological Sciences (BITS), Pilani, also has an impact. Only 400-odd students could make into the BITS this year as against the usual trend of over 700.

Technical Education Department Joint Director P.T. Prabhakar says seats in Information Technology (IT) are being grabbed like hot cakes given the healthy IT sector. "It is also a reason for the new trend seen at counselling," he says, reminding that out of the 22,000 vacant seats last year, nearly 70 per cent were of IT stream. "I was expecting a seat in CBIT this year as similar rank student got it last year," said Priya, who got 6,100th rank.

Students unhappy

Similar are the feelings of Divya Tejaswi, who got 15,064th rank. She was expecting a CSE or IT seat in Bhojreddy College of Engineering and CVR Engineering College, but seats were filled much before.

Her friend Sahitya, who got 1,853th rank, mentally prepared herself to take CSE or IT in CBIT or Vasavi but the new trend has left her dejected.

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